After Vladimir Putin praised President Trump during his annual pre-Christmas press conference Thursday, Trump initiated a call to the Russian president to thank him.
CNN:
Trump, speaking with reporters at the White House before he left to address a graduation ceremony at the National FBI Academy, said the call was "great." He also once again denied any collusion between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russian operatives.
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"He said very nice things about what I have done for this country in terms of the economy, but he said also some negative things in terms of what is going on elsewhere," Trump said. "The primary point was to talk about North Korea."
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The Kremlin said Thursday the two men discussed US-Russia ties and increasing tensions on the Korean peninsula, an issue that Putin chastised the United States for in earlier comments.
Former Massachusetts governor and 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was less accepting of Putin's public remarks, strongly rebuking the Russian president's accusations against the United States:
Putin today blames US politics for icy relations. Get real: It was Russia invading sovereign nations, propping up dictators, hacking elections, abusing human rights, and cheating at the Olympics.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) December 14, 2017
On Friday, while the president was talking about his great call with Putin, Russia's defense ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov was attacking U.S. military leadership in the press, saying the Pentagon was both deceitful and ill-informed on developments in Syria.
TASS:
"The Pentagon’s representatives’ conclusions on the withdrawal or non-withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria show not only their ill-concealed wishes that we should not be there but also that the US does not have real information on what is happening on the ground," Konashenkov said.
"If the US TV channels don’t show the arrivals from Syria of Russian aviation, military doctors, sappers and military police and the return of military equipment to the Russian sea ports, that’s the Pentagon’s problem. The US defense agency can really solve it by switching on the Russian or European TV channels," he said.
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The Defense Ministry spokesman also expressed bewilderment over the Pentagon’s statement that the US -led coalition will remain in Syria until the full defeat of the Islamic State (terror group, outlawed in Russia). This remark came in contrast to US President Donald Trump’s statement: "We've won in Syria, we've won in Iraq, but they (IS terrorists) spread to other areas and we're getting them as fast as they spread."
"It turns out that the Pentagon is deliberately deceiving the international and US public, including the supreme commander-in-chief, or there are no more grounds and even formal pretexts for the US troops’ presence in Syria," Konashenkov stressed.
Trump initiated Putin call in the wake of economic praise (CNN)
Pentagon’s doubts over Russia’s Syria pullout show US has no real data — top brass (TASS)
White House Readout of Trump Call to Putin (AP via Twitter)