By Andrew Osborn
MOSCOW, March 3 (Reuters) - When President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, some Russian hardliners were cautiously optimistic, hoping his unpredictability and transactional nature might benefit Moscow on Ukraine.
But his attack on Iran means many now see him as a growing threat to Russia itself and are questioning if Trump is the pragmatic, potentially pro-Moscow strongman ready to deal in realpolitik that they thought he was.
Some hawks are publicly demanding that
Moscow abandon U.S.-brokered peace talks with Ukraine and double down on fighting there instead, arguing that the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks which preceded the U.S.-Israeli air war were a cynical ploy which showed Washington cannot be trusted.
"The unprincipled United States is a threat to the entire world," said nationalist tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev, who is married to a top Kremlin official. "This is the United States we are trying to negotiate with regarding Ukraine. Yes, it wants a weak Europe. But it also wants a weak Russia."
Boris Rozhin, an influential war blogger who goes by the moniker, "Colonel Cassad" and has nearly 800,000 followers on the Telegram app, said Trump was a monster, driven mad by impunity.
"To seriously count on any agreements or deals with it (the monster) is either foolishness or treason," opined Rozhin.
And Andrei Sidorov, a prominent academic, went further, telling state TV that Trump was "a dangerous man" and that he regretted that the U.S. president had survived an assassination attempt in July 2024 before he was re-elected later that year.
"Now we understand who is in charge of the world," said Sidorov. "If you look at what Trump is doing now, step-by-step, practically nobody is able to stop him. Let's be honest - Russia is bogged down in Ukraine. Practically all we do now is deal with the Ukrainian question. (And) our main adversary (the U.S.) is acting as an intermediary in those negotiations."
The Kremlin, which still hopes that Trump may be able to help end its war in Ukraine on its own terms and oversee a wider lucrative U.S.-Russia rapprochement, has condemned U.S. actions as "unprovoked aggression." But it has avoided criticising Trump personally and has not offered any tangible material help to Iran beyond diplomatic support.
It has also said it believes that it is in its own interests to continue peace talks on Ukraine - even if events in Iran mean there is uncertainty about the timing and venue for the next round of talks.
The Kremlin's statement on Ukraine was a signal that it will, for now at least, keep trying to pull off a delicate balancing act - staying on good enough terms with Trump to keep him engaged on Ukraine while also calling out his policies with which it disagrees.
Russian and Western analysts do not believe there is much Moscow, which has imported, refined and then started to manufacture its own Iranian-designed drones, can do to help Tehran at this stage anyway.
Some also see a potential silver lining for Russia due to the Iran events. Kirill Dmitriev, Putin's special envoy, has raised the possibility that increasing oil prices - which have not yet shot up as much as Moscow needs to balance its budget - could help the state budget which is under strain, while discounts on Russian oil sold to countries like China and India could fall.
Ukraine might also get fewer supplies of U.S. arms and munitions, with air defence missiles sent to Gulf states instead, and less overall U.S. attention and support if the Middle East conflict goes on for some time, some Russian analysts have suggested.
The harsh rhetoric emanating from hawks does however reflect genuine unease among Russia's security and political establishment. They see an increasingly aggressive U.S. president weakening Moscow's influence on the world stage at a time when Russia is tied down in Ukraine and unable to protect its own interests in the same way the Soviet Union once did.
Trump, say the hawks, is systematically taking out Russia's allies. They point to the fate of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, who was toppled in December 2024 by opposition forces whose leader was later feted by Trump in the White House; to Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, who was seized at gunpoint by U.S. forces in January; and to Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated at the weekend in joint U.S.-Israeli strikes.
The fate of long-time ally Cuba, also in Washington's sights, is something that worries them too.
Trump's critics accuse him of being too soft on Moscow and of mistakenly bringing Putin in from the cold with a summit in Alaska last year, but some Russian hardliners are so spooked by Trump's removal of important Moscow allies that they fear he might even one day turn his attention to Russia, something he has never indicated is on his agenda.
"If Iran holds out, everything could go the other way. If it collapses, we're next," ultra-nationalist philosopher and hardline ideologue Alexander Dugin - who once viewed Trump as a great hope for Russia - told his followers.
"With Trump, when he was faithful to the original MAGA ideology, we had common ground. As Trump rapidly distanced himself from MAGA and moved closer to the neocons, those points of contact rapidly disappeared. It is better to have nothing to do with Trump as he is today," said Dugin.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn, editing by Jon Boyle)
