Putin admitted he did not expect anything special from Trump’s US election victory
Russia did not hold special expectations from Donald Trump’s administration coming to power. Moscow understands that an internal political struggle continues in Washington and that this hinders the establishment of relations. This was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expressed opinion in an interview with Le Figaro newspaper.
"We did not expect anything; nothing special actually [from the Trump administration]," he said. "Of course, during the election campaign we heard about Mr. Trump’s intentions and his desire to normalize Russian-American relations. He said they were at their worst once; we remember it well," the head of the Russian state noted.
"But we also understand and see that, in fact, the internal political situation in the United States is such that the people who lost the election do not want to put up with [the current situation] anyway and, unfortunately, they use the anti-Russian line in the internal political struggle in an extremely active manner under far-fetched pretexts," Putin said.
"Therefore, we are in no hurry. We are ready to wait but we very much expect and hope that normalization of Russian-American relations will happen sometime soon," he added.