'No new information': Russia shrugs off Mueller report

Russia has shrugged off the release of US special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, saying it offered no compelling evidence of any attempts by Moscow to influence the 2016 presidential election.

“In the form in which it has been published, the Mueller report contains no new information – all this information has already been published by various media outlets,” said Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman.

Peskov said Russia had insisted from the start of the two-year probe that “whatever investigators did, they would find no [Russian] meddling, because there was no meddling”. He also said the report would have a negative influence on Russia-US relations, which he said were “not in the best shape”.

Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, has previously said allegations that the Kremlin sought to sway the election in favour of Donald Trump were nonsense.

Peskov also criticised Mueller’s investigations into meetings between Kremlin-linked businessmen such as Petr Aven, the co-founder of Alfa Bank, Russia’s biggest commercial bank, and Trump officials, saying it was absurd to submit what he called routine business discussions to such intense scrutiny.

“[These businessmen] attract investment, and so the more contacts they have, the better,” Peskov said. “They look for new contacts, and communicate with the relevant officials in the government … and this goes on in all countries.”

Peskov said the businessmen mentioned in Mueller’s report, who also included Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, and Sergei Gorkov, the chair of Vnesheconombank, a major state-owned Russian bank, had informed Putin of the most important aspects of their conversations with figures close to Trump.

He admitted, however, that he was not aware if Gorkov had spoken to Putin about a December 2016 meeting with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Gorkov said the meeting was related to business matters, while Kushner said it was diplomatic in nature.

Leonid Slutsky, the head of the Russian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, echoed Peskov’s warning about the consequences of the US accusations.

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“[This is] having a negative effect on global stability and security,” Slutsky said. “Politicians in Washington must finally come to their senses and realise that such activities have brought the world to the brink of war.”

Alexei Pushkov, a prominent Russian senator, has mocked the report’s findings that in 2010, Viktor Yanukovych, then Ukrainian president, apparently gave Paul Manafort, who later served as Trump’s campaign manager, a jar of caviar worth at least $30,000.

“That’s very interesting information, but it has nothing to do with Russia, or imaginary collusion or interference,” Pushkov wrote. “I congratulate the special counsel.”