Kremlin wary of election surprises sees Kamala Harris as a wildcard
When President Biden said he was dropping his reelection bid, the sudden upheaval in U.S. politics came as a blow for many in the Russian elite who closely track relations between Moscow and the West.
Biden’s withdrawal in favor of Vice President Harris has upended a race that the Kremlin and its backers believed Donald Trump could win, creating “a window of opportunity” to settle the war in Ukraine on Russia’s aggressive, expansionist terms, according to analysts and current and former Russian officials.
“If Kamala Harris wins the election, it will be a huge disappointment for the Kremlin,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, the founder of R.Politik, a Russian political consultancy now based in France. “Not because they expect some concrete anti-Russian steps but because the nature of American politics will become, from their point of view, irrational and unpragmatic and self-destructive.”
Advertisement
Harris, said Stanovaya, “represents what they call in Moscow the liberal terrorists, liberal dictators. With such people, it is going to be very difficult to end the conflict.” She added: “All the windows will close shut.”
For Russia, the tumult of Trump’s presidency, his admiration for authoritarian rulers like Vladimir Putin and his bashing of NATO and the European Union, was a gift. Trump’s wild boast that he could end the war in Ukraine in a day suggested he could force Kyiv to surrender territory.
And Biden, although he sent unprecedented military and financial aid to Ukraine, was appreciated by many Russian foreign policy hands as hailing from a Cold War era when Russia was feared as a superpower rival. They view Biden as a predictable actor who would not risk an escalation into direct hostilities with Russia and who understands and respects that Russia possesses a large nuclear arsenal. “Under Biden, there was at least an understanding of red lines,” Stanovaya said.
Advertisement
Harris, largely unknown to the Russians, is viewed with alarm. “The deep state will lead under Harris,” said Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst.
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin has launched propaganda campaigns across the West aimed at undermining support for Ukraine, and promoting far-right isolationist views, internal Kremlin documents previously reported on by The Washington Post have shown.
But Biden’s departure was the second recent unpleasant surprise for Russia in Western politics — following the unexpected defeat in the French parliamentary elections of the far-right party Moscow has backed as a political ally, National Rally.
Some former Russian officials said they feared Harris’s candidacy was a sign the U.S. liberal establishment is engineering the elections to block right-wing isolationist forces. Given the Kremlin’s grip on Russian elections, some Russians struggle to believe elections can be fair and genuinely unpredictable, or to grasp the concept of coalition-building in parliamentary political systems.
Advertisement
“Look at what happened in France,” said one close Putin associate, a former senior Russian official. Like others in this article, the former official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic relations.
“There the so-called right-wing won by all indicators,” the former official said, referring to National Rally placing first in the first round of voting. “But then the far left joined with the government party and the faction with the most support was left without anything. Can this really be called democracy?”
Liberal backers of the Democratic Party have “invested so much effort, they are not going to give up this field just like that,” the Putin associate said. “These people don’t make the same mistake twice.”
The Kremlin has steered clear of publicly commenting on Biden’s departure. But propagandists inside Russia have begun pouring vitriol on Harris. One TV host called her “crazy” and a leading academic, Andrei Sidorov, made a racist comment, calling the biracial vice president “worse than a monkey with a grenade.”
Advertisement
Although she is not known for deep involvement in foreign policy, Harris has called Russia’s war against Ukraine “barbaric and inhumane.”
“No one is expecting anything good from her, since it’s considered she will be a hostage of the deep state and the level of uncertainty will more likely grow than lessen,” said a Russian academic with close ties to senior Russian diplomats. “Biden, however you view him, was a professional of the highest level in foreign policy. Kamala Harris will have difficulty competing with him here.”
Trump was well-known for cultivating good personal relations with Putin, and has consistently advocated a more isolationist policy, questioning NATO’s relevance. This month, Trump said he is considering easing sanctions on Russia, while repeatedly claiming he would quickly bring Russia’s war to an end without saying how he would do so.
Advertisement
But analysts and officials said they took a dim view of Trump’s ability to negotiate a deal and worried that he would be unpredictable.
“No one understands what will happen with Trump,” Stanovaya said. “Of course, on the one hand there will be a window of opportunity. But on the other hand, there is an understanding that it can slam shut very fast and then it could be a lot worse than under Biden.”
One Russian business executive said many in the Russian elite were nevertheless counting on Trump to restore relations. “They hope that if Trump wins, this would at the least mean an end to the escalation of sanctions and an end to the war — and a lowering of the risks for Russian business. No one wants to lose their money,” the executive said. “The Republicans don’t like Putin either, but they will be more pragmatic than the Democrats.”
Advertisement
The Russian academic said longer-term hopes for change rested with Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, Trump’s running mate on the Republican ticket. Vance repeatedly has espoused a pro-Moscow isolationist line. He refused to call Putin an “existential threat to Europe” at this year’s Munich Security Conference, and in Congress, he opposed aid for Ukraine.
“Vance is a very interesting figure,” the Russian academic said, noting Trump’s age of 78. “We still don’t know if Trump will make it to the end of his term if he is elected. It can’t be ruled out that Vance could become president. This would change a lot in U.S. politics.”
Stanovaya suggested other ways Moscow could win. “The best scenario for Russia is if a U.S. leader appears who is strong enough to implement what he has proposed and can bring through Congress agreements that have been reached with Russia,” she said. “But this scenario is not viewed as possible at all. Putin wants what no one can give him.”
“The next scenario, if this isn’t possible,” she said, “is that Moscow would rather everything burned down with a blue flame. There should be chaos.”
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMSwvsudZmtoYml8cYOOa21oqqWowKqtjKSYppmclnqprdGroKxlpah6sb7ErKCdnZ6ptqK4jg%3D%3D