The Kremlin may quietly prefer that Donald J. Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris in the U.S. presidential elections on Tuesday. But among hard-liners and ordinary Russians, hopes that either candidate could help bring a swift end to the war in Ukraine — by stopping military aid and effectively forcing Kyiv to accept Russia’s occupation of its territory — are low.
And whatever the results, the prospect of improved U.S.-Russia relations seems even more distant.
“We don’t have anyone to root for,” Dmitri Kiselyov, an anchor at the state-run Channel 1 TV station, said on a Sunday show. “That’s why we are just calmly observing,” he asserted, even as the U.S. authorities recently accused Russian operatives of using disinformation to try to sway the election.
In 2016, pro-government officials in Russia’s Parliament celebrated Mr. Trump’s victory by popping dozens of bottles of Champagne.
At that time, there was a genuine belief that the Republican political newcomer could overturn U.S. sanctions against Russia for its illegal annexation in 2014 of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, make changes to the global order by paying less attention to democratic principles and human rights ideals, and, perhaps, even lavish President Vladimir V. Putin with the type of respect he believed he deserved as the leader of a country with 11 time zones.
Eight years later, members of the Russian ruling class are more pessimistic.
“The elections will not change anything for Russia since the candidates’ positions fully reflect the bipartisan consensus on the need for our country to be defeated,” Dmitri A. Medvedev, a former president and prime minister of Russia who now serves as deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, wrote on Monday on Telegram.
That sentiment is prevalent in a Russia that feels scorned and underestimated by Democrat administrations and betrayed by a President Trump who openly praised Mr. Putin but in 2018 reversed Obama-era prohibitions on selling anti-tank weapons to Ukraine.
“Officials in the Kremlin were screaming at one another in shock,” remembered Aleksei A. Venediktov, the former editor of Ekho Moskvy, a popular radio station that the government shut down after the invasion of Ukraine. “The sense of betrayal was palpable.”
The U.S. vote comes at a critical juncture for Ukraine as it struggles to recruit enough troops and maintain financial and military support from Western allies.
Russia has gained an upper hand on the battlefield, American military and intelligence officials have concluded. But Moscow may also face its own troop shortages as the end of a third year of fighting nears. Should he win, Mr. Trump has promised to end the war before his inauguration, without describing how or saying that he wants Ukraine, America’s ally, to win.
“They respect me,” he has said of Mr. Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, President Volodymyr Zelensky. His running mate, JD Vance, has put forward a proposal that would have Russia hold on to most of the Ukrainian territory it occupies, keep Ukraine militarily neutral and demilitarize the current front line.
“Trump is someone who is both pragmatic and lacking principles,” said Konstantin Remchukov, a Moscow newspaper editor with Kremlin connections. “When a person has no principles and is pragmatic, it’s easy to make a deal with them. Anyone without principles, but a pragmatist, is a much better and more comfortable negotiating partner than a person with principles, especially principles declared in public,” he said, alluding to Ms. Harris and her Democratic Party’s pro-democracy, human rights agenda.
“Trump, even for those who think he’s nuts, they still understand him better than Kamala, who for many Russians is kind of a hologram of what America wants to think of itself,” said Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York, who researches propaganda and also lives in Moscow.
“They understand his narratives; they understand his conservatism,” she added. “But I don’t think anybody believes that he can end the war in Ukraine.”
Even pro-government Russians are aware as they watch the U.S. vote that they have not had a genuine choice or nail-biter of a presidential election at home in over two decades. Many in Moscow say they would gladly support any U.S. candidate who helps stop the war in Ukraine.
But Alyona, a 27-year-old Muscovite, said, “We all agree that none of them seem able to do it — definitely not Trump.”
Alyona, who insisted her last name be withheld because of a fear of speaking to a Western newspaper, had little hope that Mr. Trump could make a difference in relieving Russians of the heavy sanctions imposed since 2022.
Mr. Medvedev, who has derided Ms. Harris as “stupid, inexperienced and controllable,” said he did not have faith in the Republican candidate to end the war, either. Mr. Trump would “be forced to comply with the system’s rules” and “will not be able to stop the war — not in a day, not in three days, not in three months.”
The only thing that mattered is how much money Congress is willing to spend on supporting Ukraine’s military, he said, using a vulgar expression.
“That’s why the candidate the Kremlin really wants is Mr. or Mrs. Chaos,” said Mr. Venediktov, the former radio station editor. “Their ideal candidate is whoever brings chaos, whatever makes the U.S.A. weaker in terms of domestic politics. If the result brings people to the streets, mires the political process in court proceedings, anything that pushes Ukraine down the U.S. agenda, it can be considered good for Russia.”
Some observers say Russian leaders are playing down any support for Mr. Trump not only because of a sense of betrayal, but also not to seem eager for a Republican victory, considering the Kremlin’s well-documented history of interference in 2016 to shift the results in Mr. Trump’s favor and new allegations of Russian efforts to influence the vote on Tuesday and cast doubt on its result.
Mr. Putin made seemingly sarcastic remarks in support of Ms. Harris in September, praising her “infectious laugh” and saying that since President Biden was out of the race, “we will support her.”
More recently, he said he found Mr. Trump’s “desire to do everything to end the conflict in Ukraine” to be “sincere,” without commenting on Ms. Harris’s Ukraine policy.
But as he made those comments during a news conference last month at the BRICS summit, he made clear that relations between Washington and Moscow, which are at their lowest point since the end of the Cold War, could be restored only by giving Russia the respect on the global stage that Mr. Putin believes it deserves.
“How Russian-American relations will develop after the election will depend on the United States,” he said. “If they are open, then we will also be open. And if they don’t want it, then fine.”
Mr. Kiselyov, of Channel 1’s flagship weekly program, “News of the Week,” has used the U.S. campaign as proof of America’s deep polarization, moral decline and potential for political violence.
“Whoever is declared the winner, the other side will definitely not accept this, accusing the opponent of falsification,” he said on the Sunday night program, declaring: “This is a harbinger of the riots that will ensue.”
Citing a CNBC article about high-net-worth Americans, he added: “A record number of wealthy Americans expressed a willingness to leave the country indefinitely right after voting day. The reason? Fear.”
There is anxiety and fear among Americans across the political spectrum about the vote, a mood that the Kremlin hopes to capitalize on not only for its war aims, but also to telegraph to millions of Russians that as chaotic as two and a half years of war and sanctions may be, things are out of control in the United States, too.
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