Trump won. Now Putin wants results.

As congratulations for Donald Trump’s victory began to pour in from across the globe, Wednesday, one world leader stayed conspicuously silent.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters, was not planning any phone calls to Washington. 

“We’re talking about an unfriendly country that is directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state,” Peskov said, referring to United States support for Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion.

Relations between Russia and the U.S., he said, were already at “an unprecedented historic low.” They could hardly get any worse. 

Putin’s power move — the diplomatic equivalent of a slap in the face — follows a campaign in which Trump repeatedly flattered the Russian leader and promised to negotiate a swift end to the war, on what are widely predicted to be terms favorable to Moscow.

Not only did the jilting of Trump offer Putin an occasion to once again register his displeasure with Washington. It also offers a glimpse into how the Kremlin is planning to position itself as it tries to squeeze the most out of the Republican president-elect’s second term. 

Eight years ago, in 2016, Trump’s clinching of the White House was welcomed with honeymoon-level jubilance in Moscow. More recently, however, the tone struck by Russian senior officials and state media has been more like that of a jilted lover who keeps rehashing past sins — presumably with an eye on securing some future benefit. 

“Trump’s previous term ended with a record amount of anti-Russian sanctions, and practically zero dialogue,” Leonid Slutsky, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament, told the state news agency TASS on Wednesday. He made sure to add: “And through no fault of ours.” 

The Kremlin has been signaling to Trump that in order to get along, it’ll take more than just fuzzy promises and boisterous claims. Trump’s words “must be followed by actions, concrete actions,“ Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova summarized on a Wednesday morning broadcast of the state television channel Rossiya-24. 

Russia’s influential crowd of military bloggers chimed in with notes of trepidation. “Things for sure won’t get easier with Trump’s victory,” Alexander Kots, a defense blogger, wrote on Telegram. “He’s smart and unpredictable, and that’s dangerous.” 

“It’s not worth being so openly happy about Trump’s presidency,” the popular channel Voenny Osvedomitel posted. “In Donald Trump’s head, the ‘end of the conflict’ could mean something entirely different to how ordinary Russians or the leadership see it.” 

Behind the mistrustful belligerence, however, lies the hope in Russia that Trump’s win could turn the tide of the Kremlin’s war, which Moscow blames on a Democratic Party-led policy of support for Kyiv.

Statements by Republicans criticizing U.S. aid to Kyiv, however, offered “a chance for a more constructive approach,” said Slutsky, adding that the election result showed Americans want their leaders to prioritize domestic problems over “global wars.”

Trump’s victory offers the opportunity for “a reset in relations,” Kirill Dmitriev, a close ally of Putin and head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which has been sanctioned by the U.S., said in an emailed statement.  

“Ordinary Americans are tired of the unprecedented lies, incompetence, and malice of the Biden administration,” Dmitriev said. “This opens up new opportunities for resetting relations between Russia and the United States.”

“Trump has one useful quality for us,” Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president and the deputy chair of Russia’s security council, wrote on social media. “He’s a businessman to the bone, he has a deathly hatred of spending money on hangers-on and freeloaders,” such as Ukraine. 

But, he added, “the system is stronger than him.”

Cautious as Russian commentators were about the geopolitical implications of Trump’s win, they clearly considered it to be a boon for Russia domestically. 

With obvious glee, Russian commentators and officials jumped on the opportunity to use Trump’s criticism of his opponents as underscoring Moscow’s own depiction of the U.S. as a diseased country in decay, to which Russia, conveniently, provides the perfect foil. 

“Trump started talking about that the United States is ill, and that American society should solve those problems,” Zakharova said.

That, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson added, “was no small amount of progress.” 

She did not have to specify for whom.