Russia seems to be enjoying watching how the US presidential election is playing out.
The topic is a regular feature on state media current affairs programmes, where it’s presented not as the potentially era-defining event that it is, but as an unhinged reality television show.
“America is on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” the presenter declared on Vesti’s flagship nightly news show this week.
From the Biden/Harris switcheroo, to the assassination attempts on Donald Trump, each twist and turn is covered with almost gleeful irreverence, and portrayed as evidence of a country tearing itself apart.
“It is shameful for American Democrats that they can decide the fate of the country by using hired killers,” Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov said this week, during an interview on Russia 24.
That’s right, a senator claiming the Democrats were behind the assassination attempts. Dzhabarov even sits on the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament.
But this is normal in Russia.
Pro-Trump conspiracy theories are repeated without hesitation or scrutiny – from bogus claims of Democrat voter fraud to false accusations that Kamala Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, signed a law protecting paedophiles.
“Experts” are wheeled out to substantiate the rumours. This week it was Kirill Benediktov, the author of a Russian-language biography of Donald Trump, who accused the Democrats of covering-up the “real state of affairs” about Walz’s health and labelled him “mentally deranged”, following unfounded stories the Minnesota Governor is bipolar.
Trump doesn’t escape unscathed – he tends to be characterised as crazy – but most of the ridicule is reserved for Kamala Harris, whose intelligence is frequently questioned.
“Half-wit” was the description used by one Russian newspaper for the vice president back in July, and she is often mocked for her love of cooking. A high-profile TV anchor recently suggested she would be better suited to the kitchen than the White House.
The primary aim of this coverage is to paint America as a country in chaos, whose faults and frailties are being laid bare by a process the West holds up as the gold standard. The very clear subliminal message to the Russian viewer is: democracy ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
It also serves another purpose, which is to undermine anything coming from the White House that is anti-Russian or pro-Ukraine. “Look”, the Kremlin’s saying, “if America can’t get their own house in order, why should we believe anything they say when it comes to international affairs?”.
Despite the tone of the coverage in state media, Kamala Harris is supposedly Moscow’s preferred candidate in the race. Vladimir Putin said as much at the start of September, citing her “infectious” laugh as the reason for his choice. But it was a statement delivered with more than a hint of irony.
“She laughs so expressively and infectiously that it means that everything is fine with her,” he said, with a mischievous grin.
This was Russia’s president having a little chuckle himself here, knowing that his endorsement might actually harm Harris’s chances rather than improve them.
That would certainly make sense given how the candidates differ in their attitudes towards Russia and the war in Ukraine.
A Kamala Harris win would most likely mean more of the same. She’s been heavily involved in the US response so far, and when she accepted the party’s nomination for president, she pledged to “stand strong” with Ukraine and Nato.
That won’t necessarily translate into an outright military victory for Kyiv – the White House still hasn’t defined what a “win” would look like for Ukraine – but she would likely provide enough support to continue the war and prevent a defeat.
A Trump presidency could be far more beneficial to the Kremlin.
He’s repeatedly said he’d end the war within 24 hours of being elected. That timescale is highly improbable but he could force a peace deal, by denying US support to Ukraine to bring them to the negotiating table.
A reduction in military aid seems almost certain in the event of a Trump win, which would seriously hinder Ukraine’s ability to sustain the fight.
If there is a peace deal, it would most likely end the conflict along the current lines, allowing Russia to keep the Ukrainian territories that it occupies and giving Putin an outcome he can spin as a victory over the West.
Nothing is guaranteed, of course, but it’s hard to believe the Kremlin would genuinely prefer a Harris White House, and the pro-Trump coverage on state television appears to bear that out.
The election may well be “a choice for the American people”, as Putin likes to remind us, but it’s clear that Moscow is watching very closely.
Ivor Bennett is Moscow correspondent reporting for Sky News from Russia.
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