asymmetrically.

When an American adoptive father was acquitted for the manslaughter of a Russian toddler — the baby died of heatstroke after being left in a parked car for nine hours — Russian authorities responded with a draconian law banning adoptions by American families. And when, in 2005, three children of Russian diplomats were assaulted in Warsaw, three Poles found similar troubles in Moscow.

“The logic is that you can’t do anything to Russia without the expectation that the exact same thing will happen to you,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, an expert close to the Russian foreign-policy elite.

The surprise came around 4 p.m. local time, via a statement published on the Kremlin’s website. Russia would resist even the minimum expected diplomatic response of retaliatory expulsions, the statement read: “[Russia] will not resort to irresponsible ‘kitchen’ diplomacy but will plan our further steps to restore Russian-US relations based on the policies of the Trump Administration.”

Putin even invited the children of U.S. diplomats to his New Year’s party.

With that statement, the Russian president marked a complete about-turn of his traditionally petulant diplomacy. Tactically, it was a triumph. Suddenly “Obama’s sanctions,” designed so as to be untouchable by a future Trump administration, no longer seemed so irreversible.

“It is a very smart move,” Lukyanov says. “It will humiliate Obama even more.”

Putin’s magnanimous gesture also eliminates any doubt as to the likely direction of Russia policy under the Trump administration.

“Trump is now boxed in,” Frolov says. “He has become an unwitting Russian agent — everything he does now will be considered payback for this and earlier election services.”

That, of course, is just fine with the Kremlin. Insiders have reported “euphoria” among certain sections of the elite. Trump’s election, together with the appointment of Kremlinophiles — including Rex Tillerson as secretary of state-designate and the mooted choice of Thomas Graham as ambassador to Russia — has inverted the geopolitical landscape as far as Moscow in concerned. Most economists are already writing in a partial lifting of sanctions next year.

Given the obvious gestures, it would take a brave man to bet against improvement of relations between Russia and the United States. But there is no guarantee that they will improve to the degree expected. Clear differences of opinion over Ukraine, Iran, and China remain obvious stumbling blocks that Trump’s idiosyncratic foreign policy will struggle to overcome.

“Many inside the elite believe it would be idiocy to chain Russia’s fortune to the success of this wacko,” Frolov says.

But signs point to a good start to the relationship. “Putin and Trump will do a kissy-face reset at February’s Helsinki summit,” he says. “They will get along just fine for about a year, or until one of them invades somewhere, and then all bets are off.”