RUSSIA REACTS TO THE 2020 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Originally published in IR Insider on November 2020 (IR Insider page archived)

Poll workers in the state of Georgia, looking over scanned ballots. Photo: Audra Melton / New York Times

Finding its way into every interaction from dinner conversations to social media posts, the 2020 American Presidential Election has had the world at the edge of their seats since Tuesday, Nov 3. The battle between President Donald Trump and now President-elect Joe Biden became a source of debate among citizens and top officials of a country that the United States has had a rather tense relationship with since the late 1940s: the Russian Federation.

Poking fun at Russian politicians’ tendency to blame the United States for domestic issues, Kremlin critic and St. Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly member Boris Vishnevsky said: “Now Americans are choosing the person who, for the next four years, will cut Russian pensions, raise prices, dig holes in our roads, turn off our gas supplies...”

A popular meme circulating on Facebook was first posted by the account of a certain Vitaly Volevoy and presented Russian Central Election Commission Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova as portrayed in the image below, with the caption: “When you found out that in the United States they count the votes.”

Such memes indicate a fundamental lack of trust among Russians in their own electoral system. Experts suggest that Russia’s goal regarding the US has been to reduce the American public’s faith in democracy, as they have done in their own country. Political analyst Maria Lipman, in conversation with CBS News, has shared that creating uncertainty in the American electoral process facilitates Russian interests including limiting confidence in democracy, thereby allowing Putin’s regime to run the Russian Federation as they please. Without the guidance of popular opinion over the years, Putin has been able to select his own opposition candidates, imprison political opponents, and allegedly murder citizens who challenge his authority.

While in 2016, Putin voiced his support for the incumbent of the White House alongside Russian television networks that supported his views, the 2020 election has been somewhat different. President Putin has agreed to work with whoever wins the American election and expressed disappointment at Trump’s inability to mend Russia-US relations in the way he expected. Russian TV has also aired footage of American poll workers counting ballots, which increased citizens’ interest in a democratic process that looks different from theirs.

Amid controversy regarding the ballots’ legitimacy in the US, Alexei Navalny, an adviser to a Russian opposition leader, expressed confidence in the mail-in votes, stating that unlike the Russian electoral system where election chairman hide ballots, the American electoral system does not suffer from such a degree of vote falsification.

This year, residents of Khabarovsk, a city in southeast Russia, protested for 100+ days after a legitimately elected governor Sergei Furgal, who belongs to a different party than Putin’s United Russia, was arrested for murders that occurred ten years ago. As a further challenge to the Russian democracy, a constitutional amendment pushed by former cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, allowing President Putin two more six-year terms, was passed earlier this year.

It is known that Putin does not hold debates with political opponents, and rarely, if ever, is he seen campaigning in a way that is common in the United States. Last Thursday, a bill was introduced in the Russian Federal Assembly immunizing former Presidents from prosecution.

Meanwhile, as Trump prepares to leave office, he is, as Anton Troianovski of The New York Times indicates, to be subject to civil litigation in the city of New York.