One would have thought that he would take his time before opening this crucial file. But a few hours after his inauguration, the new American president started: “I believe that President Putin is destroying Russia by not agreeing in agreement”. Then, the next day: if Moscow does not agree with Ukraine “now”, Donald Trump will have “no choice but to impose high levels of taxes, customs duties and sanctions on Everything that Russia sells in the United States, “he wrote on his Truth Social network.
But these announcements do not seem to arouse great emotions in Moscow. “We are not seeing anything new here,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said on Thursday January 23. Even the threat of new sanctions on the Russian economy does not impress Vassili Kashine, Director of the Department of the Global Economy and International Affairs of the School of Advanced Studies in Economic Sciences: “Our economy is experiencing imbalances and ‘Inflation, but that does not require stopping all hostilities. […] We are able to continue like this … And if the defense of Ukraine continues to collapse as today, it would be wiser for the other party to accept our conditions. “
For Vladimir Putin, who recalled, during a meeting with his ministers on Monday, January 20, that the objective of these future discussions “must not be a brief truce […]but a lasting peace “, it is” necessary to obtain serious proposals from our colleagues who once frozen relations with Russia, “he said in a video posted on the official Kremlin website . Ideological and values between Washington and Moscow, “he said on his Telegram account.
Unstable relations
Vice-Minister of Russian Foreign Affairs, Sergei Riabkov underlines the unstable nature of relations between the United States and Russia, during an interview with the Institute of the United States and Canada of the Russian Russian Academy sciences. According to him, Russian-American relations “will be associated not only with a significant number of challenges, but also with an increased rate of unpredictable changes”.
“Coarse blackmail”
And if Donald Trump seems convinced that he will be able to settle the Russian-Ukrainian crisis in the next one hundred days, some Russian political and journalistic figures do not share his opinion. Duma has not remained silent: Trump’s strategy of “peace by force” is, according to the Russian parliament, a dead end strategy. For his part, Vladimir Rigov, co -president of the Coordination Council for the integration of the new regions of the Russian Federation, believes that the resolution of the conflict will be decided in any case between the two men, without Volodymyr Zelensky. “No one will listen to the position of the Ukrainian politician, no one gave him the floor,” he told Russian media Ria Novosti on January 22.
The resolution of the conflict in Ukraine does not seem to seduce Russian bloggers either. Russian television star followed by more than a million people on Telegram, Vladimir Soloviev said: “Trump should not be made. Trump is undoubtedly a systemic enemy. […] He says ‘either you immediately reach an agreement, or we put in place new sanctions’. This is how we can speak to Great Russia? “As for Zakhar Prilepine, followed on Telegram by more than 270,000 people, he said on Wednesday that” the opinion of the American president Trump remains only his opinion. […] No one will allow themselves to be fooled by this rude blackmail. We must prepare for a long war and a deterioration of our economy. Ukraine must prepare for the destruction of its state. “We expected no less from them.