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MOSCOW – The morning after Joseph R. Biden Jr. became president-elect of the United States, the Kremlin released a congratulatory message from President Vladimir V. Putin.
It was a happy 60th birthday to a Moscow theater director.
Unlike his Western European counterparts, who quickly congratulated himself on Saturday, Putin did not release a statement on the president-elect even last Sunday in Moscow. Four years earlier, the Kremlin had sent a message to President Trump just hours after American TV networks announced the race on election night.
“Putin is a good soldier and does not wag his tail in front of his enemies,” said a prominent pro-Kremlin analyst, Sergei A. Markov, explaining the difference.
Early signs indicate that Putin is preparing for a deeply contradictory relationship with the next American president. Although Trump never held Russia’s hopes of a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow, his early US foreign policy coincided with the Kremlin’s desire to weaken the Western alliance and expand Russian influence around the world.
Mr. Biden, on the other hand, is an elected president that Putin already has many reasons to fear. Biden sees Russia as one of America’s biggest security threats, promises to rebuild frayed ties with European allies, and, as vice president, has actively worked to support pro-Western politicians in Ukraine, a country at war with Russia.
For the Russian ruling class, 77-year-old Biden was the preferred candidate of an American “deep state” – a huge network of spies and diplomats who, in the words of the Kremlin, worked to undermine Trump and his efforts to improve ties with the Russia. And Mr. Biden, unlike Mr. Trump, seems to many Russians the kind of American politician they loathe most: someone ready to meddle around the world in the name of democratic ideals, rather than respect spheres of influence and engage with Moscow. . in hard-nosed speeches.
“There you have it, the infamous deep state that Trump promised to get rid of,” Mikhail V. Leontyev, a commentator, sang on the prime-time news in Russia on Saturday, describing Biden. “We wouldn’t care if these guys didn’t try to get involved in all of our business and the likely winner made it his mission to get involved in all the affairs of the world.”
As swing states have been counting the votes in recent days, Russian state television has increasingly adopted Trump’s claim that the Democrats had stolen the election. A reporter in Washington for Channel 1, run by the Russian state, has ridiculed the street celebrations of Biden’s victory as those of people who “cry, jump and get drunk.” In a Sunday night newscast, host Dmitri Kiselyov said the elections showed that the United States “is not a country but a huge, chaotic, communal apartment with a criminal touch.”
The vitriol on Kremlin-controlled television and the lack of quick congratulations for Mr. Biden was notable as Mr. Putin seemed to be trying to distance himself from Mr. Trump while Mr. Biden has emerged as the clear favorite in recent months. . Some Russian analysts and politicians had even speculated that a new leadership in Washington might be a good thing for Moscow.
“There are fewer and fewer among the Russian elite who see Trump as a target in himself,” wrote political commentator Tatiana Stanovaya in an essay entitled “A Farewell to Trump?” He added that there was “also a feeling of exhaustion from Trump”, even in the Kremlin.
Indeed, Putin chose this fall not to give Trump what would have been a precious foreign policy victory: a renegotiated New Start nuclear weapons deal, the latest major arms control deal between countries.
Trump’s chief negotiator, Marshall Billingslea, went so far as to announce that the two leaders had a “gentleman’s agreement” for a renegotiation. deal. Yet, within hours, a deputy foreign minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, called the Trump administration delusional. “Washington is describing what is desired, not what is real,” he said.
Instead, in a televised interview last month, Putin praised Biden for being ready to extend the treaty. And in what may have been an ambiguous compliment, he praised the Democrats for sharing leftist ideals with a party of which Putin was once a member: the Communists.
“We will work with any future president of the United States, one to whom the American people will give their vote of confidence,” Putin said.
The CIA said earlier this year that Putin appeared to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf. The Kremlin has denied meddling in American politics, and many analysts in Moscow noted that no new and substantiated allegations of Russian meddling by the United States had emerged since election day.
Indeed, the notion that Trump’s departure from the White House could reduce American anger over Russian interference in the 2016 election appeared to be the biggest silver lining of Biden’s victory, some politicians and analysts said.
“It’s not that we believe in a clean-up in Washington, but the key irritation could go away,” Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign affairs committee in the Russian parliament’s upper house, wrote on Facebook. “Wouldn’t that be a reason to resume arms control talks, for example? We are definitely ready. “
Mr. Biden could also benefit Russia by bringing the United States back into the nuclear deal with Iran, an agreement to which Moscow is a party, said another Russian MP, Leonid E. Slutsky. In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the deal, which President Barack Obama had helped broker between world powers to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Though the Kremlin remained silent on Sunday, Putin’s staunchest domestic opponent – opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny – he made his wishes on Twitter to Biden and Kamala Harris, the vice president-elect. He also congratulated the Americans for holding “a free and fair election,” an indirect side blow to the Putin government.
“This is a privilege that is not available to all countries,” wrote Mr. Navalny, who is recovering from being attacked with a nerve agent in Siberia. “Looking forward to the new level of cooperation between Russia and the United States.”
The Kremlin and its supporters have long argued, without evidence, that opposition activists like Mr. Navalny are the tools by which the American “deep state” implements its anti-Russian agenda. The Russian media often say that the United States has been planning “color revolutions” throughout the former Soviet Union.
Markov, the pro-Kremlin analyst, said he expected Biden to increase support for Putin’s internal opponents, perhaps foreshadowing a message from Russian state media during Biden’s presidency.
“Funding for a color revolution against Putin, I believe, will increase dramatically,” Markov said.
Mr. Putin portrays himself as a defender of Russia against an intrusive West. Tougher Russian politics in the US could work to her advantage, said Sam Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King’s College London.
“The conflict with the West and the United States in particular is an important part of Putin’s legitimacy,” said Greene.
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