Trump is 'not my bride,' Russian President Vladimir Putin says
“I am also not his bride nor his groom,” the Russian president said.
MOSCOW— -- Russian President Vladimir Putin today called it “naive” to ask him whether he is disappointed with the presidency of Donald Trump, saying the relationship between the two leaders, often described as bromance, isn’t personal.
“He’s not my bride,” Putin told reporters at an economic summit in Xiamen, China.
“I am also not his bride nor his groom,” he went on, according to remarks carried by Russian news agencies.
Speaking to the reporter who asked, Putin said the question “sounds very naive to me ... We are engaged in state activity.”
As relations between Russia and the United States have spiraled into a cycle of diplomatic tit for tat, with both countries recently closing diplomatic properties belonging to the other, there has been speculation that the Kremlin — which U.S. intelligence officials accuse of meddling in the 2016 presidential election — might be disillusioned with a president who, as a candidate, pledged to get along with Moscow.
The United States last week ordered Russia to close its consulate in San Francisco as well as two diplomatic annexes in Washington, D.C., and New York, in retaliation for a Kremlin order that the U.S. Embassy in Russia cut hundreds from its staff.
Putin today said Russia's Foreign Ministry will file a lawsuit against the United States over the closures. "We'll see how effective the vaunted American court system works," he said at a news conference after the summit in Xiamen.
Nonetheless, he said he was still counting on being able to work with Trump in resolving issues concerning their countries.
“Trump, in his actions, is led by the national interests of his country, I by mine,” Putin said at the news conference. “I am really counting on us being able to find, as the current U.S. president has been saying, some kind of compromises in resolving bilateral and international problems.”
Putin was also asked to comment on discussions in the United States that Trump could face impeachment as multiple investigations continue into alleged ties between members of his campaign team and Russian intelligence and into whether he might have obstructed justice in firing FBI Director James Comey.
Putin declined to comment, saying, “It’s not our business.”
“I would suggest that would be absolutely wrong to discuss a possible development in the internal political situation in the U.S. itself,” he said.