Russia is well aware that it is the US president’s style, spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said
FILE PHOTO: US President Donald Trump shouts at members of the media as he returns to the White House. © Getty Images / Win McNamee
Russia takes the harsh recent rhetoric by US President Donald Trump calmly and intends to continue dialogue with Washington, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
Trump told journalists on Tuesday that he was “unhappy” with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, accusing him of not wanting to settle the Ukraine conflict. “We get a lot of bullsh*t thrown at us by Putin,” the US president claimed. Referring to their phone calls, the latest of which took place last week, Trump said Putin “is very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless” in terms of ending the fighting. Moscow maintains that it is ready for a diplomatic solution with Kiev, but insists that it should be legally binding and address the root causes of the crisis.
When asked about Trump’s latest comments on Wednesday, Peskov replied that “we treat them quite calmly.”
The US president’s “style, generally, is quite harsh in terms of the phrases that he uses,” he added.
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“We are calm about this. We are committed to continuing our dialogue with Washington and our policy of repairing the significantly damaged bilateral relations,” the spokesman noted.
Peskov stressed that Trump’s other comment, in which he acknowledged that settling the Ukraine conflict “turned out to be tougher” than he thought, was much more “important.”
“This is something that we [Russia] have been talking about from the very beginning because such an issue is impossible to resolve overnight,” Peskov stated.
The spokesman expressed hope that despite the US president’s recent statements, “Trump and his team will continue their efforts to shift the process of the Ukrainian settlement into… a diplomatic field.”
Moscow is waiting for a response from Kiev to its proposal on holding a third round of bilateral talks in Istanbul, Peskov added. “This should be in the interests of the Ukrainian side because the situation on the ground changes daily. We are moving forward,” he explained.
Peskov also commented on the audio released by CNN on Tuesday, which allegedly captures Trump telling donors in 2024 that he had once threatened Putin that he would “bomb the sh*t out of Moscow” if Russia attacked Ukraine.
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The spokesman said he could not confirm the authenticity of the tape, adding that “whether it is fake or not, we do not know either. There is a lot of fake news these days.”