The surprise pick of Rex Tillerson as Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state has led to excitement in Moscow – and trepidation in other eastern European capitals – at the prospect of a “friend of Putin” becoming America’s top diplomat.

US allies meanwhile reacted anxiously to the news, but many diplomats said they would wait for Tillerson’s Senate hearings to discover whether he would make the conversion from oilman to statesman.

Tillerson’s nomination is likely to add further fuel to the issue of alleged Russian intervention in the election in favour of Trump.

Tillerson, the outgoing ExxonMobil chief, has a warm relationship with the Russian president. He also counts Igor Sechin, considered the second-most powerful man in Russia, after Vladimir Putin, as a personal friend.

In the month since the election, both hopes in Moscow and fears in central and eastern European capitals were tempered by an expectation that Trump’s key nominations would follow a more conventional policy on Russia than the president-elect had espoused.

Two weeks ago, when the leading candidates for secretary of state appeared to be Mitt Romney, David Petraeus and Rudy Giuliani – all of whom had spoken critically of Russia and Putin – a Ukrainian official told the Guardian there was “no need for doom and gloom” around the Trump administration, stressing that Republican administrations were traditionally tougher on Russia than Democratic ones.

Tillerson’s nomination changes all that.

Vladimir Milov, a Russian opposition politician who was briefly deputy energy minister during the early Putin years, said Tillerson’s appointment was “100% good news” for Putin.

“This is a clear sign that US foreign policy will move from principles, values and strategic partnerships towards a more transactional approach,” said Milov.

Tillerson, 64, has spent much of his career working on Russian deals and has known Putin since 1999. His work in Russia culminated in a 2011 agreement giving ExxonMobil access to the huge resources under the Russian Arctic in return for giving the giant state-owned Russian oil company, Rosneft, the opportunity to invest in ExxonMobil’s operations overseas.

As a result of the deal, Tillerson became close to Rosneft’s chief, Sechin, a hawkish hardliner who is feared even by many Russian government officials. Sechin was believed to have been behind the carving up of the private oil company Yukos and the jailing of its owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then Russia’s richest man, in 2003.

Milov said Tillerson was known in Russia as a pragmatist willing to do business with Rosneft and Sechin even after the Yukos saga.



“I heard personally from top managers of American companies that after Yukos, Russia was not worth investing billions of dollars in, because the risks that came with it were too great. But not Exxon.”

Tillerson referred to him as “my friend Mr Sechin” at an economic forum in St Petersburg earlier this year, while Sechin has said that one of his ambitions is to “ride the roads in the United States on motorcycles with Tillerson”.

The 2011 Exxon-Rosneft agreement was frozen when sanctions were imposed on Russia in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea and covert military intervention in eastern Ukraine. ExxonMobil estimated the sanctions cost it $1bn and Tillerson has argued strenuously for the measures to be lifted.



“We always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who are they really harming with sanctions,” he said, at a shareholders’ meeting.

Maxim Suchkov, an analyst at the Russian International Affairs Council, said: “Tillerson’s ties with Sechin and Putin were predominantly driven by lucrative oil deals rather than personal warmth.”

“As a head of an oil giant, he was preoccupied with making profits for his company –even if that involved growing cosy with people that are critically assessed in the US. Secretary of state position demands a different set of drivers – safeguarding national interests.



“Right now, Russians expect the personal chemistry Tillerson seems to have with Putin might be helpful in switching the relationship with Washington from a confrontation to a cooperation mode,” Suchkov, who is also the Russia and Middle East editor for Al-Monitor, added. “Americans fear this ‘chemistry’ will make Tillerson trade US interests for Moscow. Both are somewhat fractured expectations, in my view. Tillerson may have more empathy for Russia’s position but that will be unlikely to change the systemic differences between the two countries.”

European diplomats in Washington cautioned against the presumption that Tillerson would bring his outlook as head of the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company to his new job.



“Secretary of state is a different job, with a different set of priorities,” said a senior diplomat. “You only know how he is going to approach being secretary of state when he goes before the Senate and answers questions on the key issues.”



US allies in Europe will be watching the confirmation hearings in particular for Tillerson’s views on Russia, western sanctions over Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine, and most of all his expression of his view of Nato – whether he sees the alliance primarily as a counterterrorist force, or as the guarantor of European security right up to Russia’s borders.

Tillerson will not take over the state department with a free hand to rewrite policy, however. He is likely to face a striking culture clash with the institution, the bastion of foreign policy orthodoxy, which would have an ally in the secretary of defence nominee, the retired general James Mattis, who is likely to oppose any erosion of Nato solidarity in the face of Moscow’s assertiveness in Europe.



However, the nomination as head of the state department of a man who knows Putin better than most western politicians, and who appears sympathetic to Kremlin talking points, has the potential to radically shake up US policy on Russia.

“Of course people in the Kremlin would prefer to deal with people they know for a long time, and people they know positively,” said Konstantin von Eggert, a journalist and foreign policy analyst who from 2009-2010 was a vice-president of ExxonMobil Russia, but left before its deal with Rosneft.



By extension, it will lead officials in Ukraine and other eastern European countries to worry that Trump and Tillerson will end the sanctions regime and do a “big deal” with Moscow that throws them under the bus.



“Trump’s choice of Rex Tillerson suggests he wants to make good on his promise to cut deals with Russia instead of containing it,” said Thomas Wright, who has written extensively on Trump’s foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.



“Tillerson has a relationship with Putin and he opposed the sanctions imposed on Russia after the annexation of Crimea. This will alarm those worried about Russian intentions in Europe.”

In a series of Twitter posts on Tuesday, the former ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, questioned Tillerson’s nomination.



“US & our allies sanctioned Russians because of Putin intervention in Ukraine. Will Tillerson lift sanctions without Russian policy change?” McFaul wrote. He also suggested Tillerson’s personal links to the Kremlin inner circle could affect his decision-making: “Tillerson closest business associate in Russia, Igor Sechin, is on sanctions list. Can he separate personal from national interests?”

Even before Trump announced his decision on Tuesday, leading Democrats were painting Tillerson as a Moscow stooge. With a slim 52-48 majority in the Senate, it would only take three Republicans in revolt to cast Tillerson’s job in doubt. He would face aggressive questioning from Republican foreign policy hawks, led by John McCain.

“I have, obviously, concerns about his relationship with Vladimir Putin, who is a thug and a murderer, but obviously we will have hearings on that issue and other issues concerning him will be examined and then it’s the time to make up your mind on whether to vote yes or no,” the Arizona senator told CNN on Saturday.

McCain’s former chief of staff, Mark Salter, was far more blunt on Twitter. “Tillerson would sell out Nato for Sakhalin oil and his pal, Vlad,” he wrote. “Should be a rough confirmation hearing, and a no vote on the Senate floor.”