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Russia hopes US won’t release details of Vladimir Putin-Donald Trump calls
- As a rule, the materials from conversations on the level of the head of state are considered secret, Kremlin spokesman says
- The transcript of the US President’s call with Zelensky shows that Trump urged Ukraine to ‘look into’ his political rival Joe Biden
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Russia hopes the US does not release transcripts of President Donald Trump’s conversations with Vladimir Putin as it did this week with his talks with the Ukrainian leader, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.
“We would like to hope that things will not come to such situations in our bilateral relations, which already have plenty of quite serious problems,” Peskov told a conference call when asked for the Kremlin’s reaction to the US decision to release the transcript of the call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“This is a rather unusual practice,” Peskov said. “As a rule, the materials from conversations on the level of the head of state are considered secret or top secret.”
He declined to comment on the controversy around the Trump-Zelensky conversation, which has triggered a new drive in the US Congress to impeach Trump.
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The rough transcript of Trump’s call with Zelensky released by the White House on Wednesday shows that Trump urged Ukraine to “look into” his Democratic political rival Joe Biden.
The publication of the call, in which the presidents made critical comments about German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, has drawn acerbic comments from other Russian officials and lawmakers.
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