TRIPP project risks becoming a never-completed long-term construction project: Vladimir Kireev

Vladimir Kireev, a political scientist, spoke to Alpha News about how the US Democratic Party’s victory in elections to both chambers of Congress will affect Russia–US relations and the TRIPP project.

“The Democrats follow the old agenda that the United States has pursued for many years. It is a course toward a high level of conflict and support for isolating Russia. In practice, this will play out as follows. Trump’s new course was built on the long-term normalization of US–Russia relations, which, from Trump’s point of view, is necessary for American statehood in the long run and for managing many global processes. But the Democrats who won in Congress, including the upper chamber, mostly stick to the old agenda. They will sabotage this course; they are against this new normalization of relations. This means a higher level of confrontation, sabotage of Trump’s reconciliation initiatives, and support for the conflict in Ukraine. It means flooding Ukraine with weapons so that the conflict lasts as long as possible and possibly moves into an active phase, that is, direct military action between NATO and Russia,” the expert believes.

The Alpha News interviewee questioned whether the TRIPP project would go ahead, noting that it will most likely not be implemented.

“The TRIPP project is Trump’s personal initiative to cut the Gordian knot of the South Caucasus’s intractable problems. It is Trump’s personal initiative, and the Democrats will not continue this line. They will support normalization in words, but in practice they will not put forward or allocate any resources for it. That is, everything will be limited to general statements, some humanitarian trips and exchanges of delegations. In essence, it is a fast-track solution using the extraordinary methods typical of Trump. These will be shelved, and the project risks turning into a never-completed long-term construction project,” Kireev concluded.