The Kremlin relishes this American carnage

For the supposed information operations masterminds who can bend American politics to their will, the Russians seem no better at predicting the outcome of the elections than the rest of us. But they are still going to make the best of the current uncertainty.

When Donald Trump was elected in 2016, the nationalist showman-politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky opened champagne, toasting ‘a new domestic and foreign policy in the US’ and ‘a speedy improvement of US-Russia relations.’ The foreign policy professionals, though, were scrambling, caught off guard. They had treated Trump as one of a number of weapons to launch against the presumed next president, Hillary Clinton. They never expected him actually to win. In a classic piece of mirror-imaging, they had assumed American politics was almost as stage-managed as Russian ‘elections’. As one confidently told me beforehand, ‘the American establishment will never let a Trump be elected.’

Well, they did and he was. But Zhirinovsky only got half his wish: radically new US policy, yes, but none of the improvement in relations.