Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Post-U.K. Europe Won't Be Friendlier to Putin

The EU isn't more likely to ease sanctions on Russia or become anti-American.

June 24, 2016 at 4:17 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

The glass is half-empty.
Photographer: Grigory Dukor/AFP/Getty Images

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Even though Russia had little, if any, influence on the outcome of the Brexit vote, some see the event as a victory for President Vladimir Putin. However, there's no evidence Russia stands to gain and it even could be one of the losers.

The "remain" campaign has invoked Putin to try to scare Britons into voting for the status quo. Prime Minister David Cameron said in May that Putin and the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi would welcome the U.K.'s departure from the European Union. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said in March that Russia was "the only country" that wanted the U.K. to leave. On Friday, he said he suspected that Putin was "feeling a little less pressure" after the victory of the Brexit camp. "He'll be feeling a bit more upbeat about his prospects of eventually getting these European Union sanctions watered down," Hammond added.