Russian President Vladimir Putin | Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images Putin: Accusations Russia colluded with Trump damages US politics Russian president said accusations of collusion show a ‘lack of respect for voters’ who cast ballots for Donald Trump.

Once again denying accusations that his government colluded with the campaign of U.S. President Donald Trump to help him win last year’s election, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that such allegations "inflicted damage to the domestic political situation" in the U.S.

Putin also said accusations of collusion show a “lack of respect for voters” who cast ballots for Trump in last year’s election.

The Russian president’s comments came at his annual press conference in Moscow and were reported by the Associated Press.

While Putin and other Russian officials have contended that their government did not seek to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the U.S. intelligence community has been emphatic in laying blame for the interference campaign on the Kremlin.

Russia’s government, U.S. officials from both the Obama and Trump administration have said, was responsible for a massive disinformation campaign that included circulating memes and fake news articles on social media as well as the hacking of thousands of emails from political figures and institutions, almost all Democrats, and posting them through websites like WikiLeaks.

Particularly irksome to Trump has been the U.S. intelligence community assessment that the Russian government’s efforts were intended to aid his presidential campaign and hurt that of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. Trump for months resisted accepting the assessment of the intelligence community he now leads, suggesting that the interference instead could have come from multiple nations, including China, or a "400-pound person sitting in bed."

Putin also warned that some of his opponents would destabilize Russia if they were elected in a presidential election next year. He said Alexei Navalny and other opposition figures "are the same as Saakashvili [the former Georgian leader who is now detained in Ukraine], only the Russian version. And you want these Saakashvilis to destabilize the situation in the country? Do you want attempted coups d‘etat? We’ve lived through all that. Do you really want to go back to all that? I am sure that the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens do not want this.”