Russians View Biden’s Presidential Victory As Inconsequential for Bilateral Relations

In November 2016, Russian public opinion was optimistic that then-president elect Donald Trump would have a positive impact on U.S.-Russian relations. A poll conducted between November 18 and 21, 2016 shows that 60% of Russian respondents believed that Trump’s victory was a good outcome for Russia, while only 5% of respondents said a Clinton victory would have been a good outcome, and 36% claimed it was difficult to say. Other polls during the same period showed that 71% of Russian respondents favored further expansion of economic, political, and cultural ties, as well as rapprochement, with Western countries, while only 17% supported reducing ties and relationships with Western countries; 12% found it difficult to say.

At the time, the Russian public clearly desired better relations with the West and believed that Donald Trump could help facilitate an improvement of those relations. It is easy to understand why Russians would want better relations. In the wake of Russia’s domestically popular annexation of Crimea, the West placed serious sanctions on Russia that, coupled with a decline in international energy prices, reduced Russia’s annual GDP from $2.059 trillion in 2014 to $1.277 trillion in 2016. Russia was increasingly isolated economically from Western Europe, a traditionally important trading partner for Russia, and it had been kicked out of many prominent international institutions like the G-8.

However, four years on, an overwhelming 65% of Russians believe that the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election is irrelevant to Russia, while only 16% believe Russia would be better off with Trump and 9% believe it would be better off with Biden. This dramatic reversal shows that Russians have come to believe that regardless of who the U.S. president is, and regardless of that president’s friendliness or animosity towards Russia, bilateral relations are likely to remain strained and combative.

A brief review of the early interactions between the Trump administration and its Russian counterpart explain how Russian opinion shifted between 2016 and 2020. During his first in-person meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July 2017, President Trump stated that it was “time to move forward” on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, a positive sign for Russia, and the two leaders reached an agreement on a ceasefire in Syria. However, in less than a month, Trump signed the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA sanctions) into law with overwhelming bipartisan support. By December 2017, the Trump Administration released its National Security Strategy, which calls for the United States to focus on great power competition and names Russia as one of the primary threats to American national security. Relatedly, the January 2018 National Defense Strategy emphasizes similar points, arguing that Russia wants to “shatter” NATO. This opening series of events in Trump’s presidency reflects a larger trend from his administration: no matter how much Trump personally desired improved U.S.-Russian relations, his own administration, as well as Congress, the intelligence community, and military ensured that the United States remained hostile to Russia on the international stage.

The list of contradictory examples could go on, such as Trump’s siding with Russia over the FBI on Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential Election during the 2018 Helsinki Summit and Moscow’s proposal to reaffirm both countries’ commitments to the INF Treaty, Open Skies Treaty, and New START. However, Trump proceeded to withdraw the United States from the INF Treaty and Open Skies Treaty, and the future of New START is pending as of writing. The lesson for Russians was that even though the U.S. president was vocally supportive of improved relations with Russia, the actions of his administration and other parts of the United States government made those efforts impossible.

Therefore, it makes sense that Russians believe it is irrelevant who wins the U.S. presidential election in 2020. At first, this is perhaps curious since Biden has written publicly about his desire to confront Russia strongly on the international stage, while Trump has made friendly gestures to Russia, such as calling for its re-entry into the G-8 (currently the G-7). However, while Russians may view individual moves by President Trump positively, his administration’s actions elsewhere undermined their belief in improved bilateral relations.

For example, in April 2018, when asked “Why don’t you like the United States,” 44% of Russians responded that “They (the Americans) want to run the world, they are aggressors, world police, they think they own the world, they start wars,” and 35% said that “They are politically aggressive toward Russia, they are our enemy, they try to get in our face about things.” Strikingly, only 6% stated that they “Don’t like Trump or his politics.” This shows that support for Trump as an individual remains in Russia, but that his administration’s actions have undermined their faith in improving relations in the near term.

This growing understanding in Russia has implications for the future of U.S.-Russian relations. First, it demonstrates a growing pessimism in the Russian public towards their relationship with Washington. Second and relatedly, this means that Russians may be more patient with the Putin regime for not extending olive branches to Washington on various international issues, since they believe the United States does not want improved relations in the first place. Third, this could incentivize Putin’s government to adopt or continue confrontational policies with Washington, since public opinion data suggests Russians expect American hostility to continue. Additionally, 69% of Russians approve of President Putin in October 2020, up 10% since April 2020. That is strong evidence for Putin that his confrontational approach to the West is not hurting him politically. Fourth, these dynamics complicate cooperation on issues that require both American and Russian buy-in, such as climate change, Arctic governance, and nuclear arms control negotiations.

All of this is not to say the United States should start accommodating Moscow to reduce domestic Russian hostility towards the United States. Instead, it is to say that it is important to understand the domestic political incentives for the Kremlin and how changes in public sentiment could alter or sustain Russia’s international posture. Conversely, it is also important for Russians to understand the domestic political drivers of the American political establishment’s hostility towards Moscow. Specifically, merely 18% of Americans polled in February 2020 viewed Russia positively, and that means there are political incentives on being “hard” on Russia in the United States. 

Therefore, the Russian public is right: U.S.-Russian relations will remain poor under President Biden, and they likely would have remained poor in a second Trump term. That means both sides must manage expectations on what exactly the U.S.-Russia relationship can accomplish. Given the strong domestic incentives for hostility between the two powers, political leaders in both Washington and Moscow will be reluctant to change the relationship’s trajectory any time soon.