Tag Archives: Putin

Kremlin says Putin-Trump meeting possible before July

A billboard showing a pictures of US president-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen through pedestrians in Danilovgrad, Montenegro,

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Monday there was talk of a possible meeting between President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump taking place before a G20 summit in July, but there was nothing specific to report so far.

The two men have never met, but both have said they want to try to mend battered U.S.-Russia ties, which fell to their lowest level since the Cold War after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.

The new U.S. administration is under pressure over Russia however because Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, is struggling to get past a controversy over a call he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak before Trump took office.

Top White House officials have been reviewing over the weekend Flynn’s contacts and whether he discussed the possibility of lifting U.S. sanctions on Russia once Trump took office, which could potentially be in violation of a law banning private citizens from engaging in foreign policy.

When asked about it on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters that Flynn and Kislyak had not discussed lifting sanctions on Moscow.

“Obviously every ambassador informs the center (Moscow) about all the contacts he has so the information gets to us, but we are not willing to comment on internal discussions being held in Washington,” Peskov said.

Asked if there had been talks between any Russian and U.S. representatives on easing sanctions, Peskov said: “We have already said there have not been any (such talks)”.

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; Writing by Denis Pinchuk; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Merkel urges Putin to help end violence in eastern Ukraine

Tanks seen in Ukraine

BERLIN (Reuters) – German leader Angela Merkel urged Russia’s Vladimir Putin in a telephone call on Tuesday to use his influence on separatists in eastern Ukraine to stop the violence there, and the two agreed on the need for new ceasefire efforts, a German government spokesman said.

Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists have both blamed each other for the latest flare-up in a conflict that has killed some 10,000 people since April 2014.

“The German Chancellor and the Russian President agreed that new efforts must be made to secure a ceasefire and asked foreign ministers and their advisers to remain in close contact,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert said.

Merkel and French President Francois Hollande have long tried to broker an end to the conflict but the two-year-old Minsk peace deal has merely locked the two sides in a stalemate.

The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Russia. Ukraine and NATO accuse the Kremlin of fuelling the conflict by supporting separatists with troops and weapons – a charge it denies.

The Kremlin, in its description of the Merkel-Putin call, said “serious concerns were expressed in connection with the escalation of the armed conflict resulting in human losses”.

Kiev is nervous that U.S. President Donald Trump will shift the political balance in Russia’s favour and that he may consider lifting sanctions against Moscow.

The fighting in eastern Ukraine broke out a month after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014. The statement from Merkel’s spokesman made no mention of Crimea, although the Chancellor does regularly repeat sharp criticism of the annexation.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers; Editing by Paul Carrel and Mark Trevelyan)

Kremlin says it wants apology from Fox News over Putin comments

Putin

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Monday it wanted an apology from Fox News over what it said were “unacceptable” comments one of the channel’s presenters made about Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview with U.S. counterpart Donald Trump.

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly described Putin as “a killer” in the interview with Trump as he tried to press the U.S. president to explain more fully why he respected his Russian counterpart. O’Reilly did not say who he thought Putin had killed.

“We consider such words from the Fox TV company to be unacceptable and insulting, and honestly speaking, we would prefer to get an apology from such a respected TV company,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call.

Fox News and O’Reilly did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Trump’s views on Putin are closely scrutinized in the United States where U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Moscow of having sponsored computer hacking to help Trump win office, and critics say he is too complimentary about the Russian leader.

Trump, when commenting on the allegations against Putin in the same interview, questioned how “innocent” the United States itself was, saying it had made a lot of its own mistakes. That irritated some Congressional Republicans who said there was no comparison between how Russian and U.S. politicians behaved.

Putin, in his 17th year of dominating the Russian political landscape, is accused by some Kremlin critics of ordering the killing of opponents. Putin and the Kremlin have repeatedly rejected those allegations as politically-motivated and false.

Trump, who has said he wants to try to mend battered U.S.-Russia ties and hopes he can get along with Putin, was asked a question about some of those allegations by Fox Business before he won the White House.

In January last year, after a British judge ruled that Putin had “probably” authorized the murder of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London, Trump said he saw no evidence the Russian president was guilty.

“First of all, he says he didn’t do it. Many people say it wasn’t him. So who knows who did it?” Trump said.

(Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova/Andrew Osborn; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Ukraine says more soldiers killed in deadliest clashes in weeks

KIEV (Reuters) – The number of Ukrainian soldiers killed in an offensive by pro-Russian separatists over the past two days has risen to seven, Ukraine’s military said on Monday, in the deadliest outbreak of fighting in the east of the country since mid-December.

The clashes between Ukraine’s military and the pro-Russian separatists coincide with U.S. President Donald Trump’s call for better relations with Moscow that has alarmed Kiev while the conflict in its eastern region remains unresolved.

The rebels began attacking government positions in the eastern frontline town of Avdiyivka on Sunday, Ukrainian officials said. Five soldiers were killed and nine wounded on Sunday and two more were killed on Monday, they said.

“The situation in the Avdiyivka industrial zone is challenging. The enemy continues to fire at our positions with heavy artillery and mortars,” Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told a regular daily briefing.

The separatist website DAN said on Monday shelling by Ukrainian troops had killed one female civilian and wounded three others in the rebel-held town of Makiyivka, south of Avdiyivka. The reports could not be independently verified.

On Sunday the separatists said one of their fighters had been killed during heavy Ukrainian shelling of their positions.

Both sides accuse the other of violating a two-year-old ceasefire deal on a near-daily basis.

Close to 10,000 people have been killed since fighting between Ukrainian troops and rebels seeking independence from Kiev first erupted in April 2014.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was due to discuss the state of the conflict on Monday in Berlin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who helped broker the Minsk ceasefire deal.

Ukraine and NATO accuse the Kremlin of supporting the rebels with troops and weapons, which it denies. The United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Russia over the conflict, as well as for its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.

Ukraine is anxious that international resolve to hold Russia to account may waver following the election of Trump, who has spoken of possibly lifting sanctions against Moscow.

Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday and the two men agreed to try to rebuild strained ties and to cooperate in Syria.

(Reporting by Natalia Zinets; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Trump talks to Putin, other world leaders about security threats

President Donald Trump and staff

By Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump discussed Syria and the fight against Islamic State with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday in one of several calls with world leaders that the new U.S. president used to put his stamp on international affairs.

Trump’s call with Putin was their first since the New York businessman took office and came as officials said he was considering lifting sanctions on Moscow despite opposition from Democrats and Republicans at home and European allies abroad.

Neither the White House nor the Kremlin mentioned a discussion of sanctions in their statements about the roughly hour-long call.

“The positive call was a significant start to improving the relationship between the United States and Russia that is in need of repair,” the White House said. “Both President Trump and President Putin are hopeful that after today’s call the two sides can move quickly to tackle terrorism and other important issues of mutual concern.”

Former President Barack Obama strongly suggested in December that Putin personally authorized the computer hacks of Democratic Party emails that U.S. intelligence officials say were part of a Russian effort aimed at helping Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election.

Trump’s relationship with Russia is being closely watched by the European Union, which teamed up with the United States to punish Moscow after its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

Trump spoke to two top EU leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, on Saturday in addition to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

His call with Merkel, who had a very close relationship with Trump’s predecessor, former President Barack Obama, included a discussion about Russia, the Ukraine crisis, and NATO, the U.S. and German governments said.

Trump has described NATO as being obsolete, a comment that has alarmed long-time U.S. allies. A White House statement said he and Merkel agreed NATO must be capable of confronting “21rst century threats.”

Trump’s executive order restricting travel and instituting “extreme vetting” of visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries already puts him at odds with Merkel, whose embrace of Syrian refugees was praised by Obama even as it created political problems for her domestically.

Trump has said previously that Merkel made a “catastrophic mistake” by permitting more than a million refugees, mostly Muslims fleeing war in the Middle East, to come to her country.

In his call with Hollande, Trump “reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to NATO and noted the importance of all NATO allies sharing the burden on defense spending,” the White House said.

Hollande warned Trump against taking a protectionist approach, which he said would have economic and political consequences, according to a statement from the French president’s office.

The refugee order created confusion and chaotic scenes in airports on Saturday and largely overshadowed the news of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders, which took place throughout the day and which photographers captured in photos and video outside the Oval Office.

During his call with Japan’s Abe, Trump affirmed an “ironclad” U.S. commitment to ensuring Japan’s security. The two leaders also discussed the threat posed by North Korea. They plan to meet in Washington early next month.

Trump spoke to Australia’s Turnbull for 25 minutes and emphasized the close relationship between the two countries.

(additional reporting by Roberta Rampton, Andrea Shalal, Andrew Osborn, Alexander Winning, and Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Putin-Trump phone call to take place on Saturday: Kremlin

Putin

By Christian Lowe and Noah Barkin

MOSCOW/BERLIN (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump will speak by telephone on Saturday, the Kremlin said, a first step towards what Trump has billed as a normalization of relations after three years of tensions sparked by the conflict in Ukraine.

Trump will also have a telephone conversation the same day with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and that call is expected to focus on Russia, a source in Berlin familiar with the matter said. Merkel’s spokeswoman declined to comment.

Merkel and French President Francois Hollande met in Berlin on Friday, underscoring a need for European unity in the face of growing internal and external threats, including concerns about a move toward protectionism by the United States.

“Let’s say it honestly, there is the challenge posed by the new U.S. administration, regarding trade rules and what our position will be on managing conflicts in the world,” Hollande, who will leave office after an April-May election, told reporters.

Trump has said in the past that, as part of the rapprochement he is seeking with Russia, he is prepared to review sanctions Washington imposed on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula.

That move is likely to face resistance from both influential figures in Washington and foreign leaders — Merkel among them — who argue sanctions should only be eased if Moscow complies with the West’s conditions on Ukraine.

Trump and Putin have never met and it was unclear how their very different personalities would gel. Trump is a flamboyant real estate deal-maker who often acts on gut instinct, while Putin is a former Soviet spy who calculates each step methodically.

PATIENCE

Both have spoken about ending the enmity that has dragged U.S.-Russia relations to their lowest ebb since the Cold War.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along with people? Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually got along, as an example, with Russia? I am all for it,” Trump told a news conference in July last year.

Trump is already under intense scrutiny at home from critics who say he was elected with help from Russian intelligence — an allegation he denies — and that he is too ready to cut deals with a country that many of his own officials say is a threat to U.S. security.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, said the Russian leader would use the call to congratulate Trump on taking office and to exchange views on U.S.-Russian ties.

Asked by reporters if Ukraine would come up, Peskov said: “This is the first telephone contact since President Trump took office, so one should hardly expect that (it)…will involve substantive discussions across the whole range of issues.

“We’ll see, let’s be patient.”

If Putin and Trump can establish a rapport, it could pave the way for deals on Ukraine and Syria, two sources of friction during the administration of Barack Obama.

For the Russian leader, there is much to gain. Putin is expected to run for re-election next year, but is hampered by a sluggish economy. A softening or removal of sanctions would allow Western investment and credit to flow in, lifting growth and strengthening Putin’s election prospects.

(Additional reporting by Polina Devitt and Denis Pinchuk in Moscow and Joseph Nasr and Andrea Shalal in Berlin; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Hungary set on closer ties with Russia, U.S.: foreign minister

Hungary's foreign minister

By Krisztina Than and Marton Dunai

BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary favors closer ties with Russia and also expects links with the United States to improve markedly under President Donald Trump, whose criticism of NATO’s strategy on terrorism it endorses, its foreign minister said on Friday.

In an interview with Reuters days before Russian President Vladimir Putin visits Budapest to discuss closer energy ties, Peter Szijjarto also said the European Union’s sanctions regime against Moscow was ineffective and should be scrapped.

“Hungary’s position on the sanctions is that (they are) useless,” Szijjarto said, estimating Hungary had lost export opportunities worth $6.5 billion since they were introduced in place in 2014.

“Should we be happy with Russia’s economy declining? No, we regret that,” he said, adding that Budapest did not view Moscow as a threat.

Hungary, a member of NATO and the EU, has remained on good terms with Russia under the sanctions regime, imposed following its annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and its subsequent involvement in the separatist conflict in Ukraine.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban has in the past criticized the sanctions, and his overall relations with EU authorities have been less smooth, with Budapest notably defying Brussels over the latter’s attempt to introduce a quota system for hosting refugees.

Speaking in English, Szijjarto said the sanctions had also damaged the wider European economy and failed politically as they had not persuaded Russia to honor the four-power Minsk agreement to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

His preference would be for “really high level” talks to find new footing for relations with Russia.

“I don’t see Russia as a threat on Hungary. I understand and respect that our Polish friends, Baltic friends have another position on that… Russia would not attack any NATO member state. I don’t think it would be in Russia’s interest.”

TALKING ENERGY

Szijjarto said Hungary, which will host Putin on Feb. 2, is already looking at ways to extend cooperation on natural gas supplies with Russia beyond 2021.

“We have to start now,” he said, adding Budapest would like to develop alternative energy sources but Russia was far more reliable than European partners, which had failed to build the necessary infrastructure to reduce reliance on Russian gas.

Hungary is also pressing ahead with the construction of two new power blocks at its Paks nuclear plant, a 10 billion euro deal with Moscow that has come under scrutiny from Brussels, with a state aid probe still pending.

Once that probe gives the green light, “we will start (construction) immediately,” Szijjarto said.

Budapest also expects a “massive improvement” in ties with Washington, he said, agreeing with Trump’s view that NATO had failed to defend successfully against the threat of terrorism.

“Currently if we speak about threats …I see ISIS as a threat… A non-state actor is the most serious threat to the civilized world. And in this regard, I think yes, NATO could have a bigger role.”

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban clashed with the Barack Obama administration over what critics said was an erosion of democratic values by his government.

Last year Orban was one of the first international leaders to endorse Trump, who, Szijjarto said would no longer “interfere into the internal political issues of Hungary.”

“Now as the new President made it very clear that export of democracy is out of the focus of US foreign policy… this kind of pressure… will disappear,” he said.

(editing by John Stonestreet)

In Trump We Trust: Inauguration prompts celebration in Russia

poster of Donald Trump in Russia

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin may have spent years reviling America, but Russians hoping Donald Trump will usher in a new era of detente marked his inauguration on Friday with parties and trinkets from commemorative coins to “matryoshka” nesting dolls in his image.

Washington was turned into a virtual fortress with an estimated 900,000 people — backers and protesters — descending on the capital. In London, anti-Trump activists draped a banner reading “Build Bridges Not Walls” from Tower Bridge. Protests were planned across western Europe on Friday and Saturday.

But according to Gennady Gudkov, a Putin critic and former lawmaker, Russia is in the grip of “Trumpomania”, with state media giving the President-elect blanket air time at the expense of more mundane and sometimes depressing domestic news stories.

That, he said, was in part because the U.S. election, unlike elections in Russia, had been unpredictable. The Kremlin is hoping Trump will ease sanctions imposed over the annexation of Crimea, team up with Russia against Islamic State, and cut back NATO military activity near Russian borders.

Craftsmen in the city of Zlatoust, east of Moscow, have released a limited series of silver and gold commemorative coins, engraved with “In Trump We Trust” – an allusion to the phrase on U.S. banknotes “In God We Trust”.

‘TRUMPOMANIA’

Sellers of traditional matryoshka nesting dolls have added Trump dolls to their popular line-up of items carved in the likeness of President Vladimir Putin, Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, ex-President Mikhail Gorbachev and Josef Stalin.

And a shop selling Russian military kit located opposite the U.S. embassy in Moscow has unveiled a cheeky promotional campaign offering embassy employees and U.S. citizens a 10 percent discount on its wares to celebrate Trump’s inauguration.

Some of Trump’s opponents believe the Kremlin helped him win the White House by staging a hacking campaign to hoover up embarrassing information about Hillary Clinton, his rival. The Kremlin denies that, but few here make any secret of the fact that they are pleased that Trump and not Clinton triumphed.

Relations between Putin and Barack Obama had soured badly.

“Trump’s election has generated enormous enthusiasm in Russia because his warm words about Russia and Putin have given us hope that the USA and the West will stop their attack on Russia,” Sergei Markov, a former pro-Putin lawmaker, said on social media.

“We don’t know for sure if there will be an improvement (in relations) or not. But we Russians are optimists … so we are hoping for the best, while preparing for the worst.”

For Russian nationalists, Trump’s inauguration is an excuse to mix fun with self-promotion.

They are holding an all-night party at what used to be the main Soviet-era post office in Moscow where they will showcase their favorite prop, a triptych of Putin, Trump and French Front National leader Marine Le Pen.

Konstantin Rykov, a former pro-Putin lawmaker and one of the event’s promoters, said on social media it was right to celebrate the first phase of the “New World Order.”

“Washington will be ours,” he quipped.

(Additional reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Russia says ready to talk to Trump about nuclear arms, Syria

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) and Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova attend a news conference in Moscow, Russia

By Andrew Osborn and Vladimir Soldatkin

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow was ready to talk to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s new administration about nuclear weapons and Syria, saying the two countries could together solve many of the world’s problems.

Lavrov, speaking days before Trump’s inauguration, used an annual news conference to flag potential areas of cooperation and to belittle what he described as malicious attempts to link Trump to Russia in a negative light.

Trump, who has praised President Vladimir Putin, has signaled he wants to improve strained ties with Russia despite U.S. intelligence agencies alleging the Kremlin chief ordered a cyber campaign to help him beat rival Hillary Clinton to the White House.

Russia denies it tried to sway the U.S. election by hacking or other means. It has also dismissed as a fabrication a dossier written by a former officer in Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, which suggested Moscow had collected compromising information about Trump.

Lavrov dismissed the dossier’s author, Christopher Steele, as “a fugitive charlatan from MI6” and said the dossier looked like part of a campaign to cause problems for Trump and his allies. Putin on Tuesday called the same dossier a hoax.

While cautioning that the new U.S. administration would need to settle in before wider conclusions could be drawn, Lavrov signaled he was encouraged by the tenor of the Trump team’s statements so far which he said suggested it would be possible to have a pragmatic relationship.

“Trump has a particular set of views which differ a lot from his predecessor,” said Lavrov, who accused the Obama administration of wrecking cooperation across a swath of areas and of trying to recruit Russian diplomats as agents.

“By concentrating on a pragmatic search for mutual interests we can solve a lot of problems.”

He said Syria was one of the most promising areas for cooperation, saying the Kremlin had welcomed Trump’s statement that he wanted to make fighting global terrorism a priority.

“What we hear from Donald Trump (on Syria) and his team speaks to how they have a different approach (to Obama) and won’t resort to double standards,” said Lavrov.

SYRIA AND NUKES

On Syria, Lavrov said representatives from the new U.S. administration had been invited to take part in peace talks slated for Jan. 23 in Kazakhstan.

He hoped U.S. officials would attend, he said, as that would be the first opportunity for Moscow and Washington to start talking about closer Syria cooperation.

Moscow backs President Bashar al-Assad in the Syria conflict while Washington supports rebels opposing him, but both have a common enemy in Islamic State militants.

Lavrov questioned however whether Trump, in an interview he gave to The Times of London, had really suggested he would be ready to drop U.S. sanctions on Moscow in exchange for nuclear arms cuts saying his own reading of the interview had not suggested any linkage between the two issues.

But he said Moscow wanted to start talks with the United States on nuclear weapons and on the balance of military power between the two former Cold War foes anyway.

“It’s one of key themes between Russia and the United States. I am convinced we will be able to restart a dialogue on strategic stability with Washington that was destroyed along with everything else by the Obama administration.”

Such talks could cover hypersonic weapons, the U.S. anti-missile shield in Europe, space weapons, and what he said was the U.S. refusal to ratify a ban on nuclear testing. Trump has called for a nuclear weapons build-up.

Some commentators have said Senate hearings for some of Trump’s picks show they will be tough on Russia. But Lavrov said he had been encouraged by Rex Tillerson, the incoming Secretary of State, whom he cited as saying Moscow’s behavior was not unpredictable.

“(That) means that we are dealing with people who won’t get involved in moralizing, but will try to understand their partner’s interests,” Lavrov said.

Tillerson had extensive dealings with Russia when he was the head of Exxon Mobil oil company.

(Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Trump’s offer to Russia: an end to sanctions for nuclear arms cut – London Times

Donald Trump speaking at news conference on Russia foreign policy

By Guy Faulconbridge and William James

LONDON (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Donald Trump will propose offering to end sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea in return for a nuclear arms reduction deal with Moscow, he told The Times of London.

Criticizing previous U.S. foreign policy in an interview published on Monday, he described the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as possibly the gravest error in the history of the United States and akin to “throwing rocks into a beehive”.

But Trump, who will be inaugurated on Friday as the 45th U.S. president, raised the prospect of the first big nuclear arms control agreement with Moscow since the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty signed by President Barack Obama in 2010.

“They have sanctions on Russia — let’s see if we can make some good deals with Russia,” the Republican president-elect was quoted as saying by The Times.

“For one thing, I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially, that’s part of it. But Russia’s hurting very badly right now because of sanctions, but I think something can happen that a lot of people are gonna benefit.”

The United States and Russia are by far the world’s biggest nuclear powers. The United States has 1,367 nuclear warheads on deployed strategic missiles and bombers, and Russia has 1,796 such deployed warheads, according to the latest published assessment by the U.S. State Department.

Under the 2010 New START treaty, Russia and the United States agreed to limit the number of long-range, strategic nuclear weapons they can deploy.

Trump has said he will seek to improve relations with Moscow despite criticism that he is too eager to make an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The United States and other Western powers imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 over its annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine and its support for pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Asked whether he would trust German Chancellor Angela Merkel or Putin more, Trump said: “Well, I start off trusting both –but let’s see how long that lasts. It may not last long at all.”

His relations with Moscow have faced renewed scrutiny after an unsubstantiated report that Russia had collected compromising information about Trump.

The information was summarized in a U.S. intelligence report which was presented to Trump and Obama this month.

The report concluded Russia tried to sway the outcome of the Nov. 8 election in Trump’s favor by hacking and other means. It did not make an assessment on whether Russia’s attempts affected the election’s outcome.

Trump accused U.S. intelligence agencies of leaking the information from the unverified dossier, which he called “fake news” and phony stuff.” Intelligence leaders denied the charge and Moscow has dismissed the accusations against it.

RUSSIAN RELATIONS

In the interview with The Times, Trump was also critical of Russia’s intervention in Syria’s civil war which, along with the help of Iran, has tilted the conflict in President Bashar al-Assad’s favor.

“I think it’s a very rough thing,” Trump said of Russian intervention in Syria. “Aleppo has been such a terrible humanitarian situation.”

The war has killed more than 300,000 people, created the world’s worst refugee crisis and aided the rise of the Islamic State militant group.

On NATO, Trump repeated his view that the military alliance was obsolete but said it was still very important for him.

“I took such heat, when I said NATO was obsolete,” Trump told The Times, referring to comments he made during his presidential election campaign. “It’s obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror. I took a lot of heat for two days. And then they started saying Trump is right.”

Trump said many NATO member states were not paying their fair share for U.S. protection.

“A lot of these countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States,” Trump said. “With that being said, NATO is very important to me. There’s five countries that are paying what they’re supposed to. Five. It’s not much.”

Trump said he would appoint his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to try to broker a Middle East peace deal, urged Britain to veto any new U.N. Security Council resolution critical of Israel and criticized Obama’s handling of the deal between Iran and six world powers including the United States which curbed Tehran’s nuclear program.

On Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, Trump said: “Brexit is going to end up being a great thing” and said he was eager to get a trade deal done with the United Kingdom.

(Editing by Peter Cooney and Timothy Heritage)