Kim Hjelmgaard, Oren Dorell and Anna Arutunyan

USA TODAY

MOSCOW — It could be the start of a new era of mutual admiration or a diplomatic move to gain the upper hand with a new American president. Whatever his motive, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Donald Trump's triumph over Hillary Clinton paves the way to repair deeply strained relations between Moscow and Washington.

"We are aware it is a difficult path, in view of the unfortunate degradation of relations between the Russian Federation and the United States," Putin said during a ceremony for ambassadors in the Russian capital after sending Trump a message of congratulation on his surprise victory. Putin said he hopes the two nations can "work together" to end their "crisis state."

U.S.-Russian ties have worsened since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea from neighboring Ukraine and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Those moves led to international sanctions that prompted Putin to retaliate against foreign companies operating in his country.

Russia's intensified military support for Syrian President Bashar Assad in his long-running civil war also has strained relations with Washington, which wants Assad to step aside and complains that Russian airstrikes have targeted U.S.-backed rebels in Syria.

If that weren't enough friction, Putin's government is now under attack from U.S. intelligence officials who claim Moscow is behind the hacking of Democratic Party emails as part of an effort to disrupt the U.S. presidential election.

Putin has repeatedly denied helping the separatists in Ukraine, intentionally targeting U.S.-backed rebels in Syria or hacking Democrats' emails. Washington has consistently accused Moscow of straying from the truth.

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Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who teaches at Stanford University, noted how much relations have deteriorated in the past two years. "Even when times had taken a very negative turn, we were still able to have radical disagreements and continue to cooperate," he said. "During the (2014) Sochi Olympics, we had a very good relationship with Russian intelligence agencies to try to prevent terrorist attacks."

How Putin proposes to improve relations is not clear. During the campaign, Trump praised Putin's strong leadership and criticized NATO allies for not paying their fair share for a military alliance that has deployed troops and equipment on Russia's doorstep in the Baltic states, much to Putin's displeasure. Still, the president-elect may not meet Putin's expectations, some analysts say.

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"In Russia, it is acceptable that the president can just do whatever he wants, that he has more power than a czar. The Trump we have seen so far, however, is the campaign Trump and will differ from Trump the president," said Alexei Makarkin, deputy head of the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies, a think tank. "The Kremlin hopes that Trump will become a kind of (President Richard) Nixon who will be willing to make concessions. There may be a thaw, but not one based on common values."

Steve Pifer, a U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under President George W. Bush, said while Trump’s Russia policy is not yet known, there has nonetheless been a lot of consistency in the way he talks about Russia. What Trump has described "would be a reset that ignores Russia’s actions in Ukraine, ignores the challenges Russia poses to the West," said Pifer, now a scholar at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

A "reset" of U.S.-Russian relations to improve ties was one of President Obama's earliest foreign policy initiatives. It failed following Russia's intervention in Ukraine.

Ian Brzezinski, a former Defense Department official who is now a NATO analyst at the Atlantic Council think tank, said Trump’s appointments and first actions as president will be key indicators of his Russia policy and overall foreign policy, which candidate Trump left sketchy.

"It’s not like we’re dealing with a deeply thought out foreign policy from the campaign," Brzezinski said.

Hjelmgaard reported from Berlin; Dorell from Washington.