Vladimir Putin has dismissed the dossier published last week about alleged links between Moscow and Donald Trump, describing the people who ordered it as “worse than prostitutes”.
Making his first public remarks on the claims three days before Trump’s inauguration as US president, Putin joked about Russian sex workers, who he said were “the best in the world”, but said he did not believe Trump would have met any.
The dossier investigated the US president-elect’s alleged ties with Russia and contained lurid allegations that he had potentially been compromised by the Russians during trips to Moscow.
A former MI6 agent, Christopher Steele, compiled the dossier as research for Trump’s opponents during the US election campaign. On Tuesday Steele was denounced as a “fugitive crook from MI6” by the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.
In a sometimes bizarre speech in Moscow that echoed some of the more salacious language in the documents, the Russian president said that any allegation that Trump was essentially a Russian intelligence asset was nonsense.
“I’ve never met him. I don’t know what he’ll do on the world stage. So I have no reason either to criticise him, or to defend him,” said Putin, who has previously expressed admiration for Trump’s stated desire to improve relations with Russia.
Putin dismissed as an “obvious fake” the idea that Trump could have been compromised during a 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe competition.
“This is an adult, and a man who for years organised beauty contests and spoke with the most beautiful women in the world. I can hardly believe that he ran off to meet with our girls of low social morals. Although of course ours are the best in the world,” said Putin.
“The people who order these fakes which are being spread against the president-elect of America and use them in the political battle are worse than prostitutes. They have no moral limits,” the Russian president added.
Putin said it was absurd to think Russian special services would be interested in Trump given that at the time he was not involved in politics. “When Trump came to Moscow he was not a political figure, he was just a businessman, one of the rich people of America. Do they think our special services follow every American billionaire?”