Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a meeting on the sidelines of Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, September 2, 2016. If Russian wasn’t involved, Putin wouldn’t have any reason to care about the United States continuing to investigate into the source of the intrusion.
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Despite the optimism expressed by Putin on the ability to reach a cooperation deal soon, French sources told Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that “it is still early to discuss about an agreement” although the US and Russian Federation are “heading in the right direction”.
Abe said he wanted the December summit with Putin to take place in his home town of Nagato city “in a relaxing atmosphere so that talks on a peace treaty would accelerate”.
Trump has accused the State Department under Clinton of approving the Russian takeover of uranium assets in the USA after investors in the deal paid $US145 million ($191 million) to the Clinton Foundation, and in July he invited Russia to dig up thousands of documents that were deleted from Clinton’s personal e-mail server.
But when all was said and done, the Russian prime minister denied all accusations that his government had anything to do with the DNC breach.
“There’s no need to distract the public’s attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it”, he said.
The DNC was hacked prior to WikiLeaks’ release of emails sent by DNC staffers suggesting some in the party actively sought to promote Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign over her rivals. Putin poured cold water over such allegations again.
“I would very much like to hope that every participant of this market that’s interested in maintaining stable and fair global energy prices will in the end make the necessary decision”, Putin told Bloomberg.
“We wish you success and hope that we will be able to bring our bilateral relations to a higher level than they are at today”, he said.
“The two parties are likely to show that they are in favour of a peace treaty but will try not to publically express their disagreements about the Kuril islands”, Russian political analyst Konstantin Kalachev said.
The DNC hack was first reported in June, when the suspected intruders were found to have accessed party research into the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as well as the private emails of dozens of Democratic party officials.
Clinton spokesman Jesse Lehrich issued a statement in response to Putin’s interview, slamming the Russian president for calling the DNC hack a public good.
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“At the state level, we certainly weren’t involved in this”, Putin said in an interview just two days before G20 meeting in China where he will meet US President Barack Obama and other world leaders.
