The Kremlin has rejected as “fake news” reports that Donald Trump’s campaign team spoke frequently with high-ranking Russian intelligence agents over the course of last year.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said a New York Times report quoting former and current US officials contained only “anonymous information” and that it was “very hard to differentiate real from fake” news. Sources in the report were laughable, Peskov added.

“This is absolutely a newspaper report that isn’t based on any facts and that doesn’t point to any concrete facts,” he said.

Conventional communications between Trump advisors and Russian officials were ongoing, Peskov said, adding that US diplomats travel around Russia and speak with Russian officials all the time. “This all has a place, it’s normal diplomatic practice,” he said.

Peskov’s language was echoed by Trump, who tweeted early on Wednesday morning that the “fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred”. Trump also said the “real scandal” was that classified information was being “illegally given out by ‘intelligence’ like candy”.

Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, the SVR, also said the reports were baseless. “The press bureau doesn’t comment on such unsubstantiated statements in the media,” the SVR’s media chief, Sergei Ivanov, told the Interfax news agency.

Leonid Slutsky, head of the foreign affairs committee in the lower house of the Russian parliament, said the NYT report was a continuation of attacks on Trump by “mainstream media”.

“These media take advantage of any possibility to defame the new president and often use for these goals the Russian dossier, which is worn but effectively influences readers,” he said.

Senator Alexei Pushkov claimed the “Russian card” was being played against the Us president and said the NYT report contained “zero facts, only suggestions, total fog”.

“This isn’t information but an info directional mine. The goal is to blow up the Trump administration,” Pushkov tweeted.

Russian media continued their attacks on the circumstances surrounding the resignation of Trump’s national security advisor Michael Flynn, who misled the US vice-president, Mike Pence, about phone calls with the Russian ambassador.

Flynn’s departurecame after a flow of intelligence leaks – repeatedly denied by the Kremlin – that Flynn had secretly discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador to Washington.

“Opponents of the US president are using Flynn’s resignation for a new wave of hysteria against Russia,” according to a lead story in the Russian newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

The resignation sent the message that “attempts to restore relations with the Russians are an undertaking lethally dangerous for your career” and that the fuse for any Washington scandal is now the phrase “links with Russia”, argued a columnist in Moskovsky Komsomolets.

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, said it would start a new section of its website to expose “fake news” by foreign media.

Responding to another NYT report that Russia had violated the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty with the US by deploying a new nuclear-capable cruise missile, Peskov said: “No one has officially accused Russia of violating” the treaty and that Russia “remains committed to its international obligations”.