Officials say they expect US to increase pressure on Russia despite report’s findings

Russian officials have welcomed the results of the Mueller report, which found that neither Donald Trump nor any of his aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 US election, but said they doubted relations between Russia and the west would improve as a result.

“The long-awaited Mueller report has proved what we in Russia knew long ago: there was no conspiracy between Trump or any member of his team and the Kremlin,” wrote Konstantin Kosachev, the chair of the Federation Council’s committee on foreign affairs.

Blaming US media bias and anti-Russian sentiment, Kosachev and other senior officials said that they expected the United States to increase pressure on Russia and were bracing for new sanctions.

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“We in Russia have nothing to celebrate, the [meddling] accusations against us remain,” Kosachev wrote, saying he expected US officials to argue: “Yes, there was no collusion, but sanctions against Russia still need to be strengthened.”

Russia was ready to improve relations with the US, Kosachev wrote, but the question remained: “Is Trump ready to take that risk?” He said Russia hawks, including the national security adviser, John Bolton, and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, made that unlikely.

Kosachev’s remarks were echoed by other senior lawmakers. Alexei Pushkov, another senator, tweeted on Sunday evening that: “Mueller found no facts of collusion between Trump and Moscow. But Democrats will still scream that there was collusion.” The head of the Duma’s foreign affairs committee said: “All of these myths about the infamous Russian meddling was simply invented as a pretext to continue pressure against our country.”

The Kremlin declined to comment on the report on Monday. “We haven’t seen the report itself,” said Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman. “Hardly anyone has seen it, so we don’t have the ability to comment on it in any detail.”

Peskov denied Russia had attempted to meddle in the US elections and when asked whether Moscow was ready to improve ties with Washington, said Russia was “not the initiator” of the breakdown in relations.

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Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the situation would “get worse before it gets worse”, with focus shifting from elections meddling to other points of conflict such as Ukraine and Venezuela.

“My view is that the report is very good news for Trump, but Russia will remain toxic for most in the US establishment and the media,” said Trenin. “Too much has been said about the Kremlin to back down now. Instead, other issues will become more pronounced, from US election meddling to Crimea to Ukraine to Venezuela.”

“Sanctions will follow in spades from US Congress,” he added.