MOSCOW – Russia dismissed news articles published Tuesday night that concluded that members of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.
The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, said Wednesday that the coverage and CNN reports were “not based on facts and do not indicate any specific facts, either.”
The statement from Peskov was more foggy than the usual flat denial from the Kremlin, but it followed on the heels of an embarrassing episode. On Friday, Peskov denied outright that Michael Flynn had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. But by Monday, Flynn admitted that he had in fact done so.
Later, Trump posted on Twitter: “Crimea was TAKEN by Russia during the Obama Administration. Was Obama too soft on Russia?”
The message could be seen as a way to shift attention away from the mounting controversies in Washington, and to portray Trump — whom Hillary Clinton had called a “puppet” of the Russian president — as taking a harder line on Russia.
“We do not return our territories,” Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, told journalists at a regular news briefing on Wednesday. “Crimea is Russian territory.” Cups showing President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump were displayed in January before Trump’s inauguration.
Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of parliament, called on Wednesday for Trump to keep his campaign promise of rebuilding relations with Russia, and he declared that “Crimea is a part of Russia.”
The messages out of Moscow reflected a confusing picture in Washington, where Trump was trying to appear tough on Russia even as his fiercest critics suggested that the Russians might have an undue influence over him.
Unlike the Trump administration, Russian officials never disputed that there were ties between Trump’s circle and Russian officials. Two days after the Nov. 8 election, Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said “there were contacts” during the campaign between Russian officials and Trump’s team. Trump transition officials denied that assertion.
Peskov did not directly dispute the Times article — or a CNN article that found that “high-level advisers close to then-presidential nominee Donald Trump were in constant communication during the campaign with Russians known to U.S. intelligence” — but he suggested that the truth was hard to discern.
“Let’s not trust newspaper articles, because it is very difficult to differentiate between what is true and what is fake,” Peskov was quoted by Russian news agency Interfax as saying. “There are references to five sources, but not a single is named.” The Times quoted four current or former intelligence officials, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information is classified.
While criticizing the Times’ sourcing, Peskov stopped short of denying the essence of the report.
“Perhaps there is some information, who these people are, when it happened,” Peskov said. “Maybe the time will come and somebody will tell about it openly. Let’s wait for this time.”
Russia’s foreign intelligence service, which rarely issues any comments, told the state-run news agency Tass that “we do not comment on unsubstantiated insinuations published by the media.”
Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said Wednesday that “Russian representatives, Russian diplomats were doing the work that is prescribed to them not only by Moscow, but that is a normal practice for diplomats of all countries.”
“This information proves again that there is a large-scale political game inside the American politics,” Zakharova told journalists.
Vladimir Dzhabarov, first deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the upper house of parliament, told the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti that the leaks could harm Trump.
“This is a usual practice used to attempt to compromise an individual,” he said. “A shadow will be cast, and one way or another, Mr. Trump will be deprived of his team.”
He added: “Trump should realize that the target of these false stories is he, himself. If the American president will not stop this bacchanalia and will continue to surrender his people, this will end very badly — because the overall aim of his enemies is the U.S. president’s impeachment.”
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