Donald Trump inauguration: Vladimir Putin supporters hold all-night party and joke 'Washington will be ours'

Supporters of Vladimir Putin are holding an all-night party in Moscow to celebrate the inauguration of Donald Trump.

One of the organisers, Konstantin Rykov, who has served as a Russian MP affiliated to Putin’s United Russia Party and has also been described as a “Kremlin web propagandist”, invited his facebook followers to the event with the comment: “See you in the evening. Washington will be ours.”

Russian nationalists attending the party will also be treated to a “presentation of the political concept of Triptych” by an art group which has created flattering portraits of Putin, Trump and Marine Le Pen, the hard-right French Front National leader.

​Rykov wrote on his facebook page: “I beg you all to try to get to [the venue] no later than 19:30 [Moscow time]. Otherwise, you'll miss the most important point "presidential oath", as well as sparklers, party poppers and champagne.”

The party, to be held in what was once Moscow’s main Soviet-era post office, is due to be televised on Tsargrad TV, a pro-Putin Russian Orthodox TV channel.

It appears to feed in to what has been called Russian “Trumpomania” since the US election result, which in Russia was greeted by the issue of commemorative coins and matryoshka dolls.

It also comes amid reports that the US intelligence agencies are investigating links between Russian officials and associates of Trump.

The man about to become the 45th President of the US has already angrily dismissed as “fake news” a leaked dossier in which an ex-MI6 officer made unverified claims that the Russians had been cultivating Trump for years and had compromising information on his activities with prostitutes.

The Kremlin has also denied the claims in the dossier and said it did not seek to influence the outcome of the US election.

Rykov, however, reportedly made little secret of his support for Trump during the US presidential election.

In March Reuters reported that he told his social media followers: “Trump is the first member of the American elite in 20 years who compliments Russia. Trump will smash America as we know it, we've got nothing to lose.

"Do we want the grandmother Hillary? No. Maybe it's time to help the old brigand."

At least some of the popular enthusiasm for Trump in Russia appears to stem from a hope that his presidency will ease tensions between the two countries and lead to a lifting of sanctions imposed over the annexation of Crimea.

In the immediate aftermath of the US election result, Putin critic and former Russian parliamentarian Gennady Gudkov said: “Trumpomania has taken hold of the country: the media, politicians and political analysts, astrologists, and housewives, none of them can calm down and mind their business.

“In Russian news the main actor is His Majesty Trump.”

Gudkov claimed state media was giving Trump blanket air time at the expense of more mundane and sometimes depressing domestic news stories.

Sellers of traditional matryoshka nesting dolls have added Trump dolls to their popular line-up of items carved in the likeness of President Vladimir Putin, Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, ex-President Mikhail Gorbachev and Josef Stalin.

Craftsmen in the city of Zlatoust, east of Moscow, have released a limited series of silver and gold commemorative coins, engraved with "In Trump We Trust" - an allusion to the phrase on US banknotes "In God We Trust".

And in what may be a play on the suspected sympathies of US diplomats – some of them Barack Obama appointees reportedly told to vacate their posts by Trump – a Russian Army store opposite the US embassy in Moscow is offering 10 per cent discounts for embassy staff and US citizens.

The shop has also put up a poster with Trump’s picture to advertise its inauguration day discounts.