Matryoshka mates RUSSIAN lawmakers burst into applause when news of Donald Trump’s victory reached Moscow. The White House will be home to a candidate whose chumminess with Russia provoked one former CIA director to call him an “unwitting agent” of Vladimir Putin. Announcing Mr Trump’s victory in the Kremlin’s gilded ceremonial hall, Mr Putin said he welcomed the opportunity to “restore full-fledged relations with the United States”. Russia’s state-controlled media, which thrive on anti-American propaganda, could hardly hide their glee. “I want to ride around Moscow with an American flag in the window of the car,” wrote Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT, the state-backed network that actively promoted Mr Trump’s candidacy.
Mr Trump’s victory has been portrayed both inside and outside Russia as another example of Mr Putin’s luck. The Russian leader views America’s liberal democratic order, which encourages political and economic openness around the world, as a threat to his own system of closed governing networks dominated by the security services. An isolationist America bogged down in political infighting is much less…
