“I suppose (Putin) sympathizes with Trump without knowing him well in person, but he is following him closely, what he does and says, just because he is not a kind of usual Western politician”, said Alexander Baunov, an analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center.
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“I think President Obama has effectively managed our relationship with Russia in a way that has advanced the interests of the United States, while also standing up for the basic global norms that Russia violated based on their activities along and across the Ukrainian border”, he said, referring to Russia’s support for Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Putin said he did not rule out that Ankara was acting with tacit approval from Washington, possibly so that the United States would look the other way to let Turkey “go onto Iraqi territory and occupy part of it”.
Evidently, “people with pro-American and anti-Russian sentiments”, were in power under Mikheil Saakashvili (Georgia’s president between 2004 and 2013), Pushkov said.
“They [Turkish authorities] thought that we would turn tail and run!”
Putin said the Russian military operation in Syria will continue until a political process starts, but it is up to the Syrians to decide when to stop fighting and sit down for talks. No, Russia is not that country. There was no Russian air defense system there -now there’s the S-400.
He said that he had previously agreed to accommodate Turkey’s concerns regarding Syria, adding that the Turkish leadership had never asked Russian Federation to refrain from striking that specific area. “Feel the difference?” Putin said.
Trump has embraced a far less aggressive approach to Putin than most of his rivals in the GOP primary.
“It’s not our business to define his accomplishments, ” Putin said.
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Earlier in the day, Putin praised Trump as a “very talented” candidate, according to Reuters. He added that he “certainly welcomes” Trump’s calls for better U.S.-Russia ties. “It is not up to us to appraise his positive sides, it is up to the USA voters. but, as we can see, he is an absolute leader in the presidential race”. “Of course we welcome it”, Putin told reporters.
