Putin ‘open to dialogue’ as Donald Trump celebrates US election victory

While the Kremlin has so far offered an uncharacteristically muted response to Donald Trump’s re-election to the US presidency, a number of other Russian officials welcomed the Republican victory on Wednesday morning.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday morning, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stressed that the election results were “a domestic matter” for the United States, adding that Russia would not rush to conclusions on Trump’s presidency based on the president-elect’s initial statements, state-affiliated business daily RBC reported.

Trump, who told a crowd of supporters in Florida on Wednesday morning “I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop the wars,” has long been seen as sympathetic to Russia and to Putin personally, having previously boasted that he could end the war in Ukraine “in one day”.

Though Vladimir Putin is yet to comment on the outcome of the US election, Peskov said that Putin was “open to dialogue” with the United States, according to state news agency RIA Novosti.

“But let’s not forget that we are talking about an unfriendly country that is both directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state,” Peskov added.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova welcomed Trump’s apparent victory on her Telegram channel on Wednesday morning by referencing Kamala Harris’s pre-election speech. “Kamala Harris was right to quote Psalm 30:5 ‘Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.’ Hallelujah, I must add.”

In a subsequent post, Zakharova said: “Those who live by love for their country, not hatred of strangers, have won.”

Donald Trump’s victory means that US citizens had voted for “prioritising national interests and solving domestic problems rather than ‘world wars’”, head of the Russian State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee Leonid Slutsky told TASS on Wednesday.

Donald Trump, who reportedly secured over 270 electoral college votes required to win the presidency, has already claimed victory at a rally in Florida, saying that his presidency would “usher in a golden age of America”, the BBC reported.