Kathrine Frich
Dmitry Peskov, expressed “hope” that the US president would stick to his current path.
Election results in Washington rarely stay inside American borders for very long.
When voters shift the balance of power, capitals thousands of miles away start calculating what comes next.
This week, a sharp political turn in the US drew an immediate reaction from a closely watching foreign rival.
Moscow watches closely
By Wednesday morning, the Kremlin was already weighing in on the heavy midterm losses suffered by Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
According to the Daily Express and the Russian news agency Interfax, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, expressed “hope” that the US president would stick to his current path regarding the war in Ukraine, which Moscow launched in 2022.
“President Trump continues to exercise his powers, and we sincerely hope that he will continue his peacekeeping efforts,” Peskov said, as reported by Interfax.
Behind the scenes, diplomatic plans are still moving forward despite the political shake-up at home. The Daily Express reported that Peskov confirmed on Tuesday that talks are happening for a three-way meeting between Putin, Trump, and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China, on November 18 and 19.
A brutal night
For Republicans, the overnight vote tally was grim. The Daily Express noted that Democrats took back the House of Representatives for the first time since 2023 after flipping seats in Indiana, Kentucky, New Jersey, and North Carolina.
They did not stop there. According to the Daily Express, Democrats also captured governor races and Senate seats in longtime Republican strongholds, including Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, Maine, and South Carolina.
Still, Trump claimed Republicans would have won across the country if his own name had been on the ballot. Speaking to Fox News about his candidates, he said: “I thought they’d do better, we had tremendous rallies.” He also offered praise for his rivals to Fox News, adding: “They did a good job. They worked very hard.”
Sharp words and talks
Meanwhile, the president’s friendly posture toward Moscow continues to draw intense scrutiny. As reported by the Daily Express, Trump’s diplomat Steve Witkoff recently called Putin a “humanitarian” even as Russian strikes kill Ukrainian civilians, while Trump himself claimed Russia “hasn’t been doing much” in the country.
Last month, the Daily Express reported, Trump said he wanted to meet Putin and Xi “on denuclearisation” and the Ukraine conflict. “I would meet in order, anything I can do to end the war, whether somebody is there or not, whatever I can do to end the war,” he said.
In Georgia, re-elected Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff celebrated the voter backlash, according to the Daily Express. He said: “In sweeping and decisive victories the American people have rebuked the depravity, corruption, and incompetence of the failed lame duck president Donald J Trump.”
Ossoff then offered a final message to voters, as quoted by the Daily Express: “And if, at times these last two years, amidst the ceaseless onslaught of brutality and indecency, you doubted whether our republic would survive, let tonight’s results give you courage that the first light of dawn is on the horizon.”
