By Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW, Oct 19 (Reuters) – Kremlin hawks are savouring a public rift between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskiy after a damaging week for Ukraine’s president and a beneficial one for Russia, but the champagne is still on ice in Moscow.
While welcoming strains in Kyiv’s relationship with its most important ally, Moscow regards the US president’s behaviour as unpredictable and European leaders rallied behind Zelenskiy at a summit last week.
There has also been no end to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia, most US sanctions remain in place on Moscow over Ukraine and Trump’s actions can be seen in the light of November’s midterm elections to Congress.
On the surface, there was plenty for Russian hawks to revel in after Trump repeatedly criticised the Ukrainian leader, who hit back at him, prompting the US president to say “it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president”.
“The ‘Man of the Year’ and the ‘new Churchill’ has been branded by his former master as a hindrance to peace and to US interests. After all, he bit the hand that fed him until it bled,” former President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, wrote sarcastically on Telegram.
Kirill Dmitriev, President Vladimir Putin’s point man for economic deals with Washington, reposted an image showing a bear symbolising Russia alongside an eagle representing the US and both creatures confronting Britain — in the form of a lion — and the European Union.
The image was captioned “Things Have Changed.”
Dmitriev said he believed Zelenskiy’s decision to criticise Trump had backfired, adding on X: “Zelensky overplayed his hand, and his hubris and attacks on President Trump will have significant consequences.”
SCEPTICISM
Trump said on October 9 he had reached a deal with Putin to temporarily lift sanctions on Russian fuel and import Russian diesel and last week skipped new sanctions on Russia’s oil buyers. In Kyiv, Ukrainian complaints about disruption to US intelligence sharing prompted talk of US betrayal.
But there appears to be a consensus in Moscow that the Trump-Zelenskiy rift has not yet delivered significant benefits.
Sergei Mironov, parliamentary leader of the pro-Kremlin Just Russia party, saw the rift as an attempt to “play to a domestic audience ahead of the Congressional elections.”
“The US President needs cheap fuel prices for his voters. He also needs a scapegoat – someone onto whom he can shift the blame for price rises,” he said. “But the point is that all this has little to do with Russia’s interests.”
Some Russians are also wary of what they see as frequent U-turns by Trump.
Moscow initially saw Trump’s hosting of Putin in Alaska last year as a breakthrough that might lead to a peace deal in Ukraine on Russia’s terms. But, like Trump’s first term in office, the summit is increasingly seen as a disappointment.
The impact of the diesel deal may also be limited, as the export volumes — at least initially — are relatively small and Moscow taxes fuel production rather than exports, limiting the uplift for Russia’s budget.
Trump’s decision to skip sanctions on Russian oil buyers — primarily China and India — is also not seen in Russia as a great gift, or as surprising, as such a move would increase oil prices at the very moment he wants to lower them.
A more tangible benefit to Russia may be Kyiv’s complaints that it has not received recent warnings of Russian missile strikes and that there have been limits on the US Starshield system, which Ukraine uses for battlefield communications.
Writing for state media outlet RT, commentator Sergey Poletaev said Russia must be patient.
“For Russia, the task is to recognise this developing reality without mistaking it for an immediate victory,” he said. “Zelenskiy has made his choice, the only question left is how long Washington will tolerate the consequences.”
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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