Sergei Lavrov has dismissed claims that they’re links between Moscow and U.S president-elect Donald Trump.
The dossier which has become known as the “dirty dossier” has been dismissed in most quarters due to the large numbers of mistakes contained within it. It has also transpired that it was put together by an ex – MI6 agent Christopher Steele.
At his annual press conference, Lavrov described the dossier as “crude provocation” and referred to Steele as a “fugitive crook from MI6”.
The dossier was published by Buzzfeed last week and claims that Trump has been compromised by Russia. Steele was commissioned by Trump’s election opponents to find “dirt” on Trump before the election. After the dossier was passed to intelligence services, it was leaked to the press last week.
Russia Blamed for Democratic Party Hacks
The dossier comes on the back of U.S intelligence agencies pointing the finger at Russia over hacking the Democratic Party servers and the information being passed to Wikileaks during the election campaign.
This has been denied by the Russians. Lavrov said, “It’s not for me to prove any of this is false. As far as I know there is a presumption of innocence, so it’s up to you to prove it’s true.”
Lavrov continued to say that Russia stands for “pragmatism and national interests understood in a sensible way, and not messianic foreign policy and the attempt to spread values across the world”.
He also said he hoped that Trump’s foreign policy would move closer towards Russia’s ideal and that putting domestic issues first were “exactly what Putin sees as the priorities for Russian foreign policy”.
Lavrov also denied that Trump and Putin were going to meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, in the first few weeks of Trump’s presidency. He said, “It is not true, and there has been no contact to discuss such plans.”
He did confirm that U.S officials had been invited to the Syria peace talks.
