MOSCOW, November 5. /TASS/. Trump’s Republicans suffered losses in the midterm elections, while a potential Putin-Trump-Xi meeting could boost international affairs. Meanwhile, Minsk is facilitating security dialogue across Eurasia. These stories topped Thursday’s newspaper headlines across Russia.

 

Media: What landslide Democratic win in US midterms means for Russia, world

The Republican Party of US President Donald Trump was defeated in the midterm Congressional elections, with the GOP losing control of both houses and most gubernatorial positions to Democrats, according to the early vote count. The election outcome was shaped by voter discontent with the economic situation in the country, which has been battered, among other things, by the US war against Iran. In the remaining two years of his presidency, Trump will face a hostile Congress that will have levers of influence over his domestic and foreign policy, even as it may fail to turn him into a "lame duck."

"The Republican Party, which over the two years of Trump’s presidency had effectively handed him all the levers of power and failed to offer any resistance in Congress, had it coming, in many respects. This does not, however, imply support for the Democrats: it is less of a victory for them than it is a defeat for the Republicans," American studies expert and Russian International Affairs Council expert Alexey Naumov explained to Kommersant.

According to him, US policy will return to the so-called gridlock, a situation where the `gears’ of the political mechanism get stuck and nothing moves. At the same time, the US president will enjoy a fairly broad range of foreign policy tools - on diplomacy, war and peace, Naumov argued. Restrictions from Congress will likely affect his plans for the Iran war the most, as the government is spending heavily on it. "As regards Ukraine, Trump will have much more leeway to influence the situation there personally, because this is not an area where Democrats could easily block funding or the bulk of his decisions. Therefore, I believe it is in the realm of foreign policy where Trump will be more active, restricted as he may be in his ability to take action on the domestic front," Naumov maintained.

The Democratic win in the midterms effectively blocks Trump’s planned domestic legislation, including voter and immigration reform, Vladimir Vasilyev, chief research fellow at the Institute for US and Canadian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Vedomosti. On his foreign policy, the expert expects the US leader to be even more active on virtually every front. He will primarily focus on Iran and trade wars - and greater aggressiveness can be expected from him in both spheres: Trump may resume airstrikes on Iran and restart tariff wars before long. China and, perhaps, the European Union will be the main targets in new trade wars, Vasilyev said.

Trump can be expected to try to maintain a constructive dialogue on Ukraine with Moscow, but it will be harder to do so now as Democrats will hamper the US head of state, pushing him to make concessions to the Europeans on Ukraine, the expert stressed.

The diesel deal with Russia, which Trump announced on his Truth Social platform on October 9, Ukraine talks, the Iran war and plans to fire Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense can become bargaining chips for Trump if Democratic pressure on him increases, American studies expert Pavel Koshkin said.

 

Izvestia: Potential Putin-Trump-Xi meeting to address global challenges

A potential meeting between the leaders of Russia, the United States and China at the APEC summit in Shenzhen on November 18-19 could give a strong positive boost to international affairs, a senior Russian diplomat told Izvestia. According to him, while such a summit would focus on the most pressing challenges, the key parameters of the talks have yet to be clarified. Trump has already said that he would like to discuss nuclear arms control with Putin and Xi. Experts argue that a potential summit could help find common ground on Ukraine as well. The Kremlin has confirmed that preparations for talks are already underway.

"It’s hard to disagree that a summit could send a powerful positive signal that would be more than welcome against the backdrop of a challenging geopolitical situation in the world, provoked by Western globalist elites," said Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large Marat Berdyev, who also serves as G20 Sous-Sherpa, APEC Senior Official and Chief Coordinator for Greater Eurasian Partnership. "In my opinion, a meeting of such a scale would be centered around the most pressing international challenges that require a collective response from key present-day powers," Berdyev argued.

The agenda for Vladimir Putin’s visit to the APEC summit is now being actively developed, and it would be very busy, the diplomat revealed. According to him, apart from attending the Shenzhen CEO Summit on November 18-19, the Russian head of state’s speech at the APEC Business Summit is also planned, he added.

Although the economy is APEC’s absolute priority, political issues will clearly take center stage this time around, and the planned meeting between the leaders of Russia, the United States, and China will be the summit’s main event, Moscow Pedagogical State University’s History and Politics Institute Deputy Director Vladimir Shapovalov told Izvestia. Such a format is needed to restore global stability and help resolve global conflicts, he argued. According to the political analyst, Ukraine would be one of the issues that Putin, Trump and Xi may discuss.

Oleg Karpovich, department head at the Diplomatic Academy of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, believes that the meeting will necessarily address the sides’ positions on a peace settlement, which would help them find common ground based on respect while taking the national interests of all players into account. A potential trilateral summit will be held after another round of trilateral talks between Russia, the United States and Ukraine, which, as Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said, is scheduled for November 10-11. Shapovalov agrees, saying the three leaders may also discuss the conflict in the Middle East and the situation in the global economy.

The expert community is increasingly comparing the planned trilateral meeting to the 1945 Yalta conference, which laid the foundations for the post-WWII world order. Proponents of these parallels highlight the significant influence currently held by Russia, China, and the United States. Therefore, agreements between the three countries will play a major role in shaping the future of the global community. Karpovich also said the upcoming meeting in Shenzhen will be a historic one.

 

Vedomosti: Whether Minsk could host broader peace talks

An annual two-day conference on Eurasian security that gathered officials from around 50 countries wrapped up in Minsk on November 4. However, it was more difficult for the organizers to invite high-profile guests from the Western part of the continent in 2026. In previous years, the forum was regularly attended by former Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto, who even delivered speeches in Russian before Prime Minister Viktor Orban lost the election earlier this year. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov nevertheless remained one of the conference’s headliners.

Before the conference opened, Belarusian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Sekreta, who is responsible for organizing it, told Vedomosti in detail about contacts currently being maintained by Minsk, including in Hungary and Serbia following a government change there. Between conferences, Sekreta said, relevant committees make arrangements and Belarusians contact officials at the level of ministry departments in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland, and there have been more such meetings over the past year. Sekreta singled out active semi-closed `second-track’ contacts at the level of experts. As regards the possibility of Minsk hosting Ukraine talks, Europe is skeptical about this idea as "Belarus is strongly associated with Russia and its interests." Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has also rejected similar initiatives. So far, there have not been even political contacts between the foreign ministries of Ukraine and Belarus as Kiev has been reluctant to communicate, Sekreta added.

Meanwhile, Lavrov’s position on resolving the Ukraine conflict has not changed: Russia is looking to achieve a lasting peace rather than a one-off ceasefire. Russia’s top diplomat held talks with Myanmar Foreign Minister U Tin Maung Swe and OSCE Secretary General Feridun H. Sinirlioglu, who attended the forum for the first time, on the sidelines of the conference in Minsk. The latter also became Turkey’s candidate for the post of UN chief after voting stalled at the Security Council late last month.

The agenda of the Minsk Conference on Eurasian Security can even be called exclusive, as the Belarusians play the role of facilitators in conceptualizing it, Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council Ivan Timofeyev, who attended the forum, told Vedomosti. According to him, Russian and Belarusian experts in international relations complement one another instead of competing, and their counterparts from both global majority countries and the West join them at the conference. The expert pointed to the OSCE, which eventually became an international organization following a series of meetings but can no longer move forward, relying solely on its past foundations. "And we are trying to achieve in Eurasia what once failed in Europe," he concluded.

 

Vedomosti: Armenian PM ready to seek EU accession as early as 2027-2028

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told Euronews in an interview that he considers formally filing to join the EU in 2027 or 2028 to be "realistic." At the same time, he noted that he understands the need to choose between the EU and continued membership of his republic in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) further down the road, so this dilemma will be left to Armenian citizens to decide, the head of government said.

In foreign policy, the current Armenian leadership is trying to speed up a peace agreement with Azerbaijan, on the one hand, and settle the fate of Armenia as an EAEU member sooner, on the other hand, Armenian political analyst Karen Igityan noted. According to him, holding a referendum on a constitution that the opposition has already dubbed an Aliyev constitution, in reference to Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev, is vital for Pashinyan today. "The prime minister will perhaps link a constitutional referendum to accession to the EU. Security bodies are currently pressuring the opposition on that issue as they continue to exert pressure on opposition parties and their leaders," the expert told Vedomosti. he timing of Yerevan submitting its EU accession bid will depend on the level of European economic assistance, Igityan argued. Therefore, the political analyst continued, Pashinyan is seeking to draw benefits from two integration blocs at once, as the EAEU’s charter does not include mechanisms for expelling countries and the Armenian prime minister continues to advocate cooperation between his republic and EAEU member countries in his rhetoric. Armenia’s potential integration into the EU itself may take an undetermined amount of time, Igityan maintained: Montenegro and North Macedonia, countries that started from much more advantageous positions, have spent years trying to join the bloc without any luck.

For the current Armenian leadership, Armenia’s accession to the EU is a settled matter, and their entire political and economic strategy is geared toward achieving this goal, Artur Atayev, a political scientist and expert on the Caucasus, noted. At the same time, the expert said, Yerevan has pursued an active policy on the Eurasian track. This is evidenced by the upcoming visit to Moscow by Alen Simonyan, Secretary of the National Security Council, who intends to discuss the reinforcement and maintenance of economic cooperation with partners in the EAEU. "For the current Armenian elite, cooperation with the EU is a matter of political survival, while cooperation with the EAEU is a matter of economic survival," the political scientist pointed out.

That Armenian authorities still fail to realize that political and economic issues are interconnected and interdependent is another story, Atayev argued. Therefore, Yerevan could be expelled from the EAEU even before it files a formal application to join the EU, the expert believes. "The situation in Armenia is so unpredictable today that I do not rule out an acute political crisis in the country," he concluded.

 

Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Africa seen as a testing ground for innovative payments

The African continent south of the Sahara is one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency regions, where growth is primarily driven by the mass market. Nigeria ranks among the global leaders in terms of interest in cryptocurrencies. However, this has been more of a background activity for locals in the cryptocurrency market than a well-organized system of foreign currency payments.

Experts, however, expect Africa to become a testing ground for new mechanisms for cross-border payments for Russia. Exporters already view digital currencies as an important financial instrument and a response to external challenges, according to data obtained by Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

Of the $27 billion in trade, Russian exports to Africa account for about $23 billion, while African imports to Russia amount to just $4 billion. According to calculations by African business leaders, doubling trade turnover would require increasing the share of imports within the overall figure from the current 15% to at least 30%. "If we want to achieve a mutual trade turnover of around $50 billion, then imports from Africa must account for at least $15 billion," Louis Gouend, head of the African Business Club (ABC), insisted.

It is the African continent that can become a testing ground for new mechanisms for Russia’s cross-border payments, experts argue. Sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency regions, Matvey Voitov, director for marketing at Web3 Tech, explained to Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

Vitaly Stepanov, CEO of the Moscow Export Center, told Nezavisimaya Gazeta on the sidelines of the Moscow-Africa conference last week that tokens are "an important instrument of organizing the foreign trade turnover in the current circumstances." "We have quite a wide range of partners, including in the sphere of financial transactions. And some of our partners offer services related to settlements in digital currencies," he said. The availability of such an instrument could help boost Russian exports to overseas markets.

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