“We have been cutting spending on items that are not considered high priority and are not going to mindlessly spend our reserves and spend them according to some political whim”, Putin said, according to a transcript of the interview published on the Kremlin website.
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The Russian government has been accused of trying to interfere in the upcoming US elections, and a letter from Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid seen by the New York Times asks the FBI to investigate possible links to Donald Trump’s campaign.
He has no problem invading his neighbors, but Russian President Vladimir Putin draws the line at the United States presidential candidate using inappropriate campaign tactics. They found that the two parties responsible were Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, both intelligence agencies linked to Putin’s government.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff has accused Putin of trying through the leaks to tilt the presidential race in favor of her opponent and has accused Trump of supporting policies friendly to the Russian government, noting his expressions of admiration for Putin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin would like OPEC and Russia to reach a deal to freeze oil production.
“Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data?'” Putin told Bloomberg. Investors were also looking ahead to non-farm payroll data later in the day for a steer on the USA economy, with a strong reading seen as boosting the chance of a Federal Reserve interest rate rise soon.
A computer network used by Clinton’s campaign, and the party’s fundraising committee for the U.S. House of Representatives were also hacked.
He said all the information in the oceanarium will be provided not only in the Russian, Chinese and English languages, but also in Japanese and Korean. “The important thing is that the content was given to the public”, he stated. “I don’t know anything about it, and on a state level Russian Federation has never done this”.
He said that even if Russian Federation wanted to influence the USA election, Moscow’s experts aren’t knowledgable enough to do so. “I’m not sure that even our Foreign Ministry experts have that level of comprehension”.
“At any rate we definitely do not do this at the state level”, Putin added.
He described Clinton and Trump as “very smart people” who “understand which buttons you need to press” to win support, calling it part of “the USA political culture”.
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James Brown, an associate professor at Temple University in Tokyo who published a book this year on the territorial dispute, said Putin’s comments suggested “the status quo suits Russian Federation quite well”.
