‘We are stocking up on the popcorn!’ Russia delights in US election turmoil

Up until Tuesday, the Kremlin did not appear sure what the best outcome from the US presidential elections would be. On the one hand was Donald Trump,  an unpredictable ally, not always in control of his brief or entourage. On another, Joe Biden, a known and hostile rival, but known for playing by clear rules.  

There may not be quite the jubilation that accompanied the unexpected election of Trump four years ago. But judging by the smiles and glib reactions in state media and beyond, the Kremlin seems to delight in having stumbled on the perfect solution – neither Trump nor Biden, but electoral chaos. 

From half-hearted reports in the run-up, Russian networks have swung to rolling coverage. They have detailed discussions of the electoral geography of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada. And on Thursday, the main propaganda chat shows were devoted to one subject alone: the fraud and outrage of America’s weird elections.

The flagship 60 Minutes lunchtime discussion slot took its usual gladiatorial format: a panel of nationalistic experts who work with the host to attack the enemy or any reasonable voice that might be in their midst. Maxim Grigoriyev, director of the Foundation for Democratic Studies, led the charge.

“What we can say with certainty is that America has been split into two parts who hate each other,” he said. “It's a crisis of liberal democracy.”

That was the cue for anchor Yevgeny Popov to interject, barely concealing a broad grin.

“It’s just like Ukraine!,” he said.

With slides of turnout up the screen behind him, Mr Popov insisted something might be up with the voting. How was it that 90 and 92 per cent of people in certain Democratic-leading precincts were voting Biden. Weren’t statistical voting outliers something that Russia was accused of? Where was Golos – an NGO that monitors infringements in Russian elections – when you needed them?

“But we are the bloody totalitarian regime, and they are the shining city on the hill,” he said.  

The focus on supposed fraud was mirrored in comments made across the entire Russian political establishment.

“Neither free nor fair,” thundered  Margarita Simonyan, the combative head of RT, the Kremlin-funded broadcaster, using the accusatory language western institutions make in their routine condemnations of Russian elections.  

Never undersold on contradiction, Ms Simonyan – who has most recently provided propaganda life-support to election-usurping Alexander Lukashenko – then proceeded to list seven supposed irregularities.

“Have we declared the election invalid yet?” she said.

A similar attack came from Vyacheslav Nikonov, chair of the State Duma’s education and science committee: “Both candidates said they won and clearly, the elections can’t give a legitimate result. Whoever wins in the courts, half of the Americans will not consider them legitimate. The split is about values, no one is prepared to make any compromise, and there are a ton of guns. We are stocking up on the popcorn.”

On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also revealed Vladimir Putin had spoken to Belarus president Lukashenko on the US drama.  

Not everyone in Russia is interpreting the torturous process as a bad thing. For opposition leader Alexei Navalny, still recovering in Germany following his nerve agent poisoning, the ongoing uncertainty was a sign of democracy. “I woke up and opened Twitter to find out who had won. No one knows yet. Now that is what I call an election,” he wrote in a tweet on Wednesday.  

Cartoons and memes depict the otherworldliness of such intense political competition. A much-shared image by the famous political cartoonist Sergei Yolkin showed two impoverished Russian village dwellers discussing the ongoing counting progress in Pennsylvania and Michigan.  

“It’s not surprising state media is paying so much attention to the US vote – more than Russian elections,” said Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of the Golos elections NGO that came under fire in the 60 Minutes show.

“They are worried about how democracy looks to people who have forgotten what it feels like – so they are doing anything they can to discredit the process.”