Russia’s Putin Joins China’s President in Staying Silent on Joe Biden’s Win
Russian state media, however, voices support for Trump campaign’s effort to challenge results
Russian state media voiced support for President Trump’s view that the Nov. 3 presidential vote was marred with irregularities, as President Vladimir Putin, like the leaders of China, Brazil and a handful of other countries, remained silent about Joe Biden’s victory in last week’s election.
Leading pro-Kremlin broadcasters appeared to follow Mr. Trump’s lead in questioning the conduct of the vote and in at least one instance criticized the way several U.S. broadcast networks cut away from him as he made unfounded allegations that the election had been stolen. Some Russian politicians, meanwhile, predicted that a Biden presidency would further sour relations between Moscow and Washington.
Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, told reporters on Sunday that as vice president, Mr. Biden had worked with President Obama to launch what Mr. Slutsky called “a new containment of Russia.” Mr. Biden frequently criticized Russia’s foreign policy and strongly supported sanctioning Moscow for annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, when U.S.-Russia relations slumped to a post-Cold War low.
Mr. Putin, though, has so far held his silence on the election, as have Chinese President Xi Jinping, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Dmitry Peskov, Russia’s presidential spokesman, suggested it was good practice to remain quiet for now. Mr. Trump’s campaign has filed lawsuits contesting the vote-counting process in several states, though it was unclear whether any, if successful, would change election results in any meaningful way.
“We consider it appropriate to wait until the election results are officially summed up,” Mr. Peskov told reporters on Monday.
China also said it would offer its formal congratulations to Mr. Biden once the election process is complete.
“We’ve noticed that Mr. Biden has already announced he’s been successfully elected,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Monday. “We understand the result of the presidential election will be determined in accordance with U.S. laws and procedures.”
The last time a Chinese leader didn’t congratulate the winner of a U.S. presidential election the day after the vote was in 2000, when the contest between Vice President Al Gore and Republican candidate George W. Bush stretched out for weeks amid a court battle over a recount in Florida. Then-Chinese leader Jiang Zemin sent Mr. Bush a congratulatory message two days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favor on Dec. 12, 2000.
Beijing, like Russia, has nonetheless signaled its openness to working with a new administration in Washington after trade and other disputes drove ties to their lowest level in years.
“We have always advocated that China and the U.S. should manage differences on the basis of mutual respect and noninterference in each other’s internal affairs,” Mr. Wang said.
In an editorial published late Sunday with the headline, “Relations can be reset for the better,” the state-run China Daily newspaper said that reviving trade talks would be the obvious way to repair U.S.-China ties.
“China hasn’t congratulated Biden on his victory as quickly as Western countries did,” Hu Xijin, editor in chief of the Global Times, a nationalistic Communist Party tabloid, said in a tweet. “I think it’s because China needs to keep a larger distance from the US presidential election to avoid getting entangled in its controversy.”
Despite the generally measured coverage, some within China’s state-media apparatus have adopted a more mocking tone on social media.
Hours after President Trump tweeted Saturday “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!”, a verified English-language Twitter account run by the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper retweeted that post with the caption, “HaHa” and a laughing smiley face emoji. The retweet has since disappeared.
Prominent European leaders, in contrast, have congratulated Mr. Biden—notably French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Both support a multilateral approach to tackling trade disputes, climate change and other global problems in opposition to Mr. Trump’s more transactional approach to international relations.
Political analysts suggested there might be other, more complex factors at play in Russia holding back its formal congratulation of Mr. Biden.
Among those is the sway Mr. Trump might continue to exert in the Republican Party, which could retain control of the Senate and gained ground in the House of Representatives in the Nov. 3 vote.
“I think there is a rather complicated calculation,” said Nikolay Petrov, a senior research fellow at British think tank Chatham House. “At one point, it’s understandable that Donald Trump will keep being an influential political player and it’s better to make him a little bit happy…and not to demonstrate that the Kremlin switches sides that easily.”
Nor is Mr. Putin implacably opposed to Mr. Biden. The Russian president last month said he was encouraged by Mr. Biden’s willingness to extend the New START nuclear arms-reduction treaty that expires in February—something Russia has been eager to do while the Trump administration has been more reserved.
Still, suspicions run deep with regard to Mr. Biden and his running mate, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
Speaking on one of Russia’s most widely watched channels, Rossiya 1, news anchor Dmitry Kiselyov said Mr. Trump was right to challenge the conduct of the election. He also criticized the U.S. for not allowing foreign observers to monitor the polls and pointed to how some U.S. television networks cut away from Mr. Trump making unfounded allegations last week.
“The President of the United States is a whole state institution. To knock him off the airwaves with offensive comments is the destruction of a state institution,” Mr. Kiselyov said during his political news and current affairs talk show, News of the Week. He said there may be no hope of uncovering the correct result in last week’s election.
Vladimir Solovyov, another prominent presenter and talk show host, also pointed to Mr. Trump’s legal challenges. “It is too early for Trump to yield,” he said.
Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, a 24-hour English-language news channel, said on social media that the election was neither free nor fair and made unsubstantiated claims of corruption.
Ella Pamfilova, chair of Russia’s Central Election Commission, said widespread use of mail-in votes opened up the possibility of fraud.
“There is no doubt that Biden will become president and many point to Harris as his successor,” said Dmitri Trenin, director at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Both are seen as very anti-Russian.”