As Trumpmania wears thin in Russia, Kremlin TV declares him ‘scarier than Kim Jong-un’

As Russian hopes of swift detente under US President Donald Trump have fizzled, state media, which hailed his election win, have made a U-turn. On Sunday, they even said he was scarier than North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

Trump’s decision to launch a missile strike against Russian ally Syria, drop a giant bomb on Afghanistan, and stick with Obama-era policies on Crimea, mean Russian hopes of him befriending the Kremlin have been on the slide for a while.

If Russian state TV is a guide, his tough talk on North Korea’s nuclear programme and decision to despatch a naval strike force to the region appear to have buried any Russian hopes that he might intervene less in foreign affairs than his predecessors.

Dmitry Kiselyov, anchor of Russia’s main weekly TV news show Vesti Nedeli, on the Rossiya 1 channel, is widely seen as the top pro-Kremlin presenter. He had already begun to dial back the Trumpomania and start criticising the US president.

But on Sunday, his first broadcast since Rex Tillerson’s maiden visit to Moscow as US Secretary of State, Kiselyov, who once praised Trump for his “independence” from the US political establishment, removed the gloves.

“The world is a hair’s breadth from nuclear war,” said Kiselyov. “War can break out as a result of confrontation between two personalities; Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Both are dangerous, but who is more dangerous? Trump is.”