Kremlin's cautious strategy: Media told to moderate Trump praise
Putin's administration has advised pro-government media "not to praise" American President Donald Trump directly but to depict him instead as "a man who had the wisdom to respond to Russia's outstretched hand."
Amid improving relations between Russia and the USA, the president's administration has counselled pro-government media not to personally exalt American President Donald Trump but to portray him as "a man who had the wisdom to respond to Russia's outstretched hand," according to "Viorstka," which consulted various sources within the Kremlin and the pro-government media.
They fear failure
"If negotiations do not lead to anything, we can always say, 'We tried, we did everything,'" one of the newspaper's informants explained.
According to this source, any interactions between the teams of Russian President Vladimir Putin and USA's Donald Trump should be cast in a positive light.
"We must stress in every possible way that Trump himself has been oppressed—both at home and in Europe. They put pressure on us, they put pressure on him, but we turned out to be stronger," a source told "Viorstka."
An employee of a major state media organisation described the new information approach as follows: "We are not making promises about the end of the ‘Special Military Operation’ (SVO), nor are we setting deadlines. The key point is that contact has been made, and we are ready to listen."
Media received specific guidelines
An employee of government television noted that there were no directives to push specific topics, but the president's administration instructed "balancing" Trump with statements from the Russian side. - It feels like walking a minefield—don’t overpraise, don’t underpraise. So we’re switching to a neutral information-processing mode to play it safe - said the head of one of the pro-government media outlets.
Previously, Trump caused unease in the Kremlin with his remarks about Ukraine and his stern tone towards Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Bloomberg sources reported.
According to them, his comments "surpassed all expectations" of Moscow, which was attempting to project its view of the Russian-Ukrainian war onto the USA. Simultaneously, the top Russian leadership is wary of a possible "trap" or unforeseen developments from the American administration, which currently appears inclined to make concessions.
Nonetheless, the Kremlin aims to leverage this situation to maximise benefits for Russia from any prospective agreements to conclude the war, said a Bloomberg source.
Trump, who promised to end the war within 24 hours, had a telephone conversation with Putin three weeks after the inauguration. A week later, Russian and American delegations convened in Saudi Arabia without Ukraine's participation. As a result of the discussions, it was decided to restore embassy operations and commence consultations on mutual "flashpoints," and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the possibility of easing sanctions contingent on Moscow's position.
Meanwhile, Trump began almost verbatim echoing Kremlin propaganda lines. He accused Zelensky of instigating the war and labelled him a "dictator without elections" with a support level of 4 per cent, fourteen times lower than the actual result provided by the Kyiv Institute of Sociology (57 per cent in February). American diplomats opposed referring to Russia as the "aggressor" in the G7 declaration and did not support the UN resolution condemning the Russian invasion on the war's third anniversary.
