By Guy Faulconbridge, Dmitry Antonov and Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin reacted cautiously on Wednesday after Donald Trump declared victory in the U.S. presidential election. It said the US is still a hostile state and that only time would tell whether Trump's rhetoric about ending the war in Ukraine would become reality.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 set off the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the Soviet Union and the US came close to nuclear war.
Trump, a Republican, claimed victory in the 2024 presidential election after Fox News predicted he had defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, marking a stunning political comeback four years after he left the White House.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Trump made a number of important statements during his campaign about his desire to end the war in Ukraine, but only time will tell whether they lead to action.
“Let's not forget that we are talking about an unfriendly country, which is both directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state (in Ukraine),” Peskov told reporters.
Peskov said he was unaware of plans by President Vladimir Putin to congratulate Trump on his victory and that relations with Washington were at an all-time low.
“We have repeatedly said that the US is capable of contributing to the end of this conflict. This cannot be done overnight, but… the US is capable of changing the trajectory of its foreign policy. Will this happen, and if so, how… we will see after (the inauguration of the US president in) January.”
Russian and American diplomats say relations between the world's two largest nuclear powers have only deteriorated during the depths of the Cold War. Russian officials from Putin on down said ahead of the election that it made no difference to Moscow who won the White House, even as Kremlin-led state media coverage showed a preference for Trump.
Kirill Dmitriev, the influential head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, said a Trump victory could be an opportunity to mend ties.
“This opens up new opportunities to restore relations between Russia and the United States,” added Dmitriev, a former Goldman Sachs banker who has previously had contacts with the Trump team.
In 2009, then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed a “reset” with Moscow, but due to an apparent translation error, Moscow was presented with a symbolic button labeled “overload” in Russian instead of “reset”.
Despite the 'reset', relations between Putin and then US President Barack Obama deteriorated.
WAR IN UKRAINE
Trump, 78, has pledged to quickly end the war in Ukraine if elected, though he has not explained exactly how he would do that.
Putin has said he is willing to talk about a possible end to the war, but that Russia's territorial gains and claims must be accepted, something Ukrainian leaders have rejected as an unacceptable capitulation.
Russian troops are advancing in Ukraine at their fastest pace in at least a year and control about a fifth of the country.
That includes Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, about 80% of the Donbas – a coal and steel zone – and more than 70% of the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday that Trump's victory would likely be bad news for Ukraine, which relies on Washington as its main military backer.
“Trump has one useful quality for us: as a businessman through and through, he absolutely does not like to spend money on all kinds of hangers-on,” Medvedev, now a senior security official, wrote on his Telegram account.
“The question is how much Trump will have to give to the war. He is stubborn, but the system is stronger,” he said.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Andrew Osborn, Dmitry Antonov and Mark TrevelyanWriting by Andrew Osborn/Guy Faulconbridge Editing by Mark Trevelyan, Philippa Fletcher and Ros Russell)
