A Contested Election in US ‘Ideal Situation for the Kremlin’ and Putin is Promoting That, Eidman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 6 – A situation in which Joe Biden has won the presidency in the election but Donald Trump has not conceded defeat is “the ideal situation for the Kremlin,” one that it can be counted on to try to exploit to further divide the United States and thus to be in a position to act elsewhere because Washington is so absorbed by this problem, Igor Eidman says.

            Because that is so, he continues, some Putin allies like Aleksandr Dugin are already saying that Russia must do everything it can to promote the notion that Trump, not Biden has won the American election (gordonua.com/blogs/eydman/idealnaya-situaciya-dlya-kremlya-byla-by-v-sluchae-sushchestvovaniya-v-ssha-dvuh-prezidentov-schitayushchih-sebya-legitimnymi-1526260.html).

            Many have focused on what the Kremlin might have been doing before November 3, but fewer have focused on its campaign since then to “’unmask the falsification of elections’” there since and thus “deepen the divide and destabilize American society, depriving the new American authorities of legitimacy” and “weakening as much as possible ‘the main opponent.’”

            From the Kremlin’s perspective, the Russian sociologist and commentator says, this campaign has an additional benefit domestically: it is intended to show the Russian people that however much they complain about falsifications in Russian elections, there is even more of that in the American ones.

            In reality, however, “massive falsification of election results is possible only in places where there is a centralized authoritarian power which controls the courts and gives the rules the sense that they are beyond being held to account.”  None of that exists in the US, Eidman says; and so talk about falsifications there is at a minimum vastly overstated.

            But the fact that Donald Trump is incapable of accepting the results is “extremely useful for Putin.” And the Kremlin leader “will use the situation to the fullest extent possible and try to blow up the United States.” Those who care about democracy and the US must be just as vigilant about Russian interference after the elections as they were before.