Russian President Vladimir Putin has addressed unsubstantiated claims about Mr Trump. Credit:AP In a press conference on January 11, Mr Trump lashed out at some media organisations for publishing the unverified material about alleged Russian intelligence gathering on him and Democrat Hillary Clinton. The Russian aim was to leverage the information to shift US policy toward Russia, including by potentially blackmailing Mr Trump, according to memos shown to the president-elect and outgoing President Barack Obama by US intelligence agencies. Beauty Contest Mr Trump said it was "disgraceful" that intelligence agencies had allowed "fake" information out, comparing this to the actions of Nazi Germany. The US tycoon-turned-politician was last in Moscow in 2013 for the staging of the Miss Universe contest that he owned. He hoped unsuccessfully to meet Putin, tweeting in June that year about the possibility the Russian leader would attend the beauty pageant.

Mr Trump is "a grown man, and secondly he's someone who has been involved with beauty contests for many years and has met the most beautiful women in the world," Mr Putin said. "I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world." Russia ready to talk about nuclear arms, Syria Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that Moscow was ready to talk to Mr Trump's new administration about nuclear weapons and Syria, saying the two countries could together solve many of the world's problems. Mr Lavrov used an annual news conference to flag potential areas of cooperation and to belittle what he described as malicious attempts to link Mr Trump to Russia in a negative light. Mr Lavrov dismissed the dossier's author, Christopher Steele, as "a fugitive charlatan from MI6" and said the dossier looked like part of a campaign to cause problems for Mr Trump and his allies.

While cautioning that the new US administration would need to settle in before wider conclusions could be drawn, Mr Lavrov signalled he was encouraged by the tenor of the Trump team's statements so far which he said suggested it would be possible to have a pragmatic relationship. "Trump has a particular set of views which differ a lot from his predecessor," said Mr Lavrov, who accused the Obama administration of wrecking cooperation across a swath of areas and of trying to recruit Russian diplomats as agents. "By concentrating on a pragmatic search for mutual interests we can solve a lot of problems." He said Syria was one of the most promising areas for cooperation, saying the Kremlin had welcomed Mr Trump's statement that he wanted to make fighting global terrorism a priority. "What we hear from Donald Trump (on Syria) and his team speaks to how they have a different approach (to Obama) and won't resort to double standards," said Mr Lavrov.

On Syria, Mr Lavrov said representatives from the new US administration had been invited to take part in peace talks slated for January 23 in Kazakhstan. He hoped US officials would attend, he said, as that would be the first opportunity for Moscow and Washington to start talking about closer Syria cooperation. Moscow backs President Bashar al-Assad in the Syria conflict while Washington supports rebels opposing him, but both have a common enemy in Islamic State militants. Mr Lavrov questioned however whether Mr Trump, in an interview he gave to The Times of London, had really suggested he would be ready to drop US sanctions on Moscow in exchange for nuclear arms cuts saying his own reading of the interview had not suggested any linkage between the two issues. But he said Moscow wanted to start talks with the United States on nuclear weapons and on the balance of military power between the two former Cold War foes anyway.

"It's one of key themes between Russia and the United States. I am convinced we will be able to restart a dialogue on strategic stability with Washington that was destroyed along with everything else by the Obama administration." Such talks could cover hypersonic weapons, the US anti-missile shield in Europe, space weapons, and what he said was the US refusal to ratify a ban on nuclear testing. Mr Trump has called for a nuclear weapons build-up. Some commentators have said Senate hearings for some of Mr Trump's picks show they will be tough on Russia. But Mr Lavrov said he had been encouraged by Rex Tillerson, the incoming Secretary of State, whom he cited as saying Moscow's behaviour was not unpredictable. "(That) means that we are dealing with people who won't get involved in moralising, but will try to understand their partner's interests," Mr Lavrov said. Loading

Mr Tillerson had extensive dealings with Russia when he was the head of Exxon Mobil oil company. Bloomberg and Reuters