Pavel Felgenhauer: Disarray in Washington catches Moscow off guard

While a group of right-wing Donald Trump supporters caused havoc in Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, Moscow officials were celebrating Orthodox Christmas Eve. President Vladimir Putin and his cohorts were attending mass, state TV channels were broadcasting live church services instead of political commentary, and the Russian capital was essentially closed for all official business. Moscow’s reaction to the riots and sacking of the United States Congress was, therefore, not immediate and not well orchestrated. The kneejerk reactions of the Russian authorities mostly took the form of gloating about the US’s failure to do things properly. The chair of the Federation Council (upper chamber of the Russian parliament) Foreign Affairs Committee, Konstantin Kosachev, wrote on his Facebook page, “America is split in half, its political two-party system has failed, its elections are rigged, and Trump is an eccentric narcissist venturer pretending to maintain course at the helm of a sinking ship.” Kosachev’s bottom line: the United States must never again try to instruct others how to conduct democratic elections. The speaker of the State Duma (lower chamber of parliament), Vyacheslav Volodin, insisted the US needs to enact constitutional reforms to abolish the outdated Electoral College, which he characterized as essentially undemocratic and which thwarts the will of the people, who should be electing their leaders directly, like in Russia. “America must better concentrate its efforts on solving its own problems and stop interfering in the affairs of other nations,” Volodin declared.

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