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European officials, totally incredulous in the face of the chaos surrounding the Presidential election in the United States, have been desperately trying to stay out of this in recent months.
“We don’t want anything to do with your fucked up elections,” official said in Kiev told BuzzFeed News last week, summing up the feelings of an anxious continent that has seen its alliance with the United States eroded under President Donald Trump.
But after the the president declared victory prematurely Just hours after the polls closed, pushing false allegations of mass fraud, several of America’s closest allies could no longer remain silent.
While several states have yet to be officially decided on Wednesday morning, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer called for US elections “a very explosive situation“And warned of the possibility of a” constitutional crisis “.
British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was slightly more optimistic, urging patience and saying the UK has full confidence in the checks and balances of the US electoral process.
“We must be patient and wait and see who wins the American elections,” he said. tweeted, warning that it is “important that the process has sufficient time to reach a conclusion.”
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Not everyone was so held back. Alexander Stubb, former Prime Minister of Finland, called the election a “stress test” for American democracy. “I still want to believe in [the] resilience of its democratic institutions, but I’m concerned about the talk we just heard from @realDonaldTrump, ”he tweeted.
Nicola Sturgeon, Prime Minister of Scotland, also tweeted his concern and ostensibly took a hit at Trump’s party. “Crucial hours and days ahead for the integrity of American democracy,” she said. “Hopefully we start to hear the voices of Republicans who understand the importance of this.”
Slovenia’s right-wing Prime Minister Janez Jansa appeared to be the only European Union leader or senior official to openly support Trump, whose wife was born in the central European country.
“It’s pretty clear that Americans voted @realDonaldTrump @Mike_Pence for # 4moreyears,” he wrote on Twitter, which prompted the social network to label it as disinformation.
Besides Trump’s attempt to undermine the election outcome, there were also concerns about what the instability meant for Europe’s own stability.
The “deep polarization” of the United States, tweeted Manfred Weber, a German politician who heads the European People’s Party, the largest political group in the European Parliament, should be a “warning” to the EU. “If we lose the ability to compromise, our democracies are in danger,” he wrote.
And some European officials feared that the uncertainty surrounding the election could play into the hands of the adversaries of the United States, especially Russia, which aspires to see a fractured EU.
“Champagne corks burst in Moscow and Beijing”, tweeted Jörg Wojahn, senior official of the European Commission in Germany, possibly referring to the champagne evening which was organized by a Russian ultranationalist lawmaker after Trump’s surprise victory in 2016.
Russia appeared to be enjoying a good early performance from Trump, with a prominent TV news program essentially calling the race for him overnight. “Biden is ahead for now, but he hardly stands a chance”, falsely news anchor told viewers before entering a Trump inspired dance on air.
However, as the results in the main battlefield states began to paint a picture that made Biden’s chances appear to be improving, the tone in Moscow changed.
Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-controlled RT television channel, expressed her frustration.
“Neither free nor fair”, she tweeted, following a chain of tweets filled with false information about the election.
The Kremlin’s preference for Trump is clear, according to US intelligence, and Russian President Vladimir Putin even publicly admitted that Trump was his preferred candidate in 2016.
However, as pre-election polls pointed to a victory for Biden, the Russian leader appeared to hedge his bets, rejecting Trump’s accusations that the Biden family had engaged in criminal behavior in Eastern Europe.
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Reached by BuzzFeed News on the eve of the election, Konstantin Kilimnik – the enigmatic Ukrainian Russian political agent who has been indicted by the office of former special advocate Robert Mueller for conspiring to obstruct justice and obstruct justice. justice, and whose FBI has said had “ties to Russian intelligence” – tried to play a Biden presidency as something the Kremlin would actually welcome.
The reason? Senior Moscow officials, such as the Kremlin’s First Deputy Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko “know the senior officials of the[ocratic] started off pretty well, and they think they can find inroads into the Biden administration, ”Kilimnik told BuzzFeed News via WhatsApp.
Moreover, he asserted, the Russian political elite are “impatient to go [back] in business as usual ”and“ they think Biden is the guy who will do fine, ”he said.
Biden, however, characterized Russia as greatest threat to US national security and suggested he would take a much harsher approach to Moscow than Trump did.
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