Until the President-elect takes office with his new team and meets Vladimir Putin, the most judicious advice on Russian-Western relations under a Trump administration would be ‘wait and see’.
At this stage two key unknowns stand out. First: will the new American president go with his pronouncements and have Putin as his ‘new best friend’; or will he listen to the mainstream of the Republican Party, to say nothing of his intelligence briefings, and adopt a more steadfast attitude towards the Kremlin and its desire for a re-ordered global hierarchy?
