This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The Kremlin has ridiculed reports that Russia collected compromising material on the US president-elect, Donald Trump, as unfounded and laughable.



Unverified reports by a former western counter-intelligence official published on Tuesday said Moscow had been cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for years and collected material – including from a hotel in the Russian capital – that could be used to blackmail him.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, called the dossier “pulp fiction”, saying the Kremlin did not have compromising material on Trump nor on Hillary Clinton, as the documents also said.

“This is an absolute canard, an absolute fabrication, and it’s complete nonsense,” Peskov said in a statement. “The Kremlin does not engage in collecting kompromat,” he added, using a Russian term for compromising material. There is a long tradition in Russia of kompromat surfacing and leading to the disgrace of political figures and opposition activists.

Donald Trump's team says reports of Russian dossier are 'total garbage' – live updates Read more

Russian state media dismissed the reports as more unproven accusations against the country, after a report published last week by US intelligence agencies said Moscow had meddled in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump win.



“Its content was like a parody of poorly constructed kompromat,” the television channel Rossiya 24 said of the latest reports.

The Guardian has not been able to confirm the veracity of the documents’ contents, and the Trump team has consistently denied any hidden contacts with the Russian government.



Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but in a series of furious tweets on Wednesday morning, the president-elect blamed intelligence agencies for the reports and vehemently denied Russia had tried to use leverage over him:

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Russia just said the unverified report paid for by political opponents is "A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FABRICATION, UTTER NONSENSE." Very unfair!

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) I win an election easily, a great "movement" is verified, and crooked opponents try to belittle our victory with FAKE NEWS. A sorry state!

Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to "leak" into the public. One last shot at me.Are we living in Nazi Germany?

Trump’s spokeswoman, Kellyanne Conway, and chief of staff, Reince Priebus, also described the allegations as “fake news”.

“We should be concerned that intelligence officials leak to the press and won’t go and tell the president-elect or the president of the United States himself now, Mr Obama, what the information is,” Conway said on the US TV show Late Night with Seth Meyers. “They’d rather go tell the press.”

Peskov said Moscow needed to “respond with the appropriate humour” to the allegations, but also called the news an “obvious attempt to harm our bilateral relations” with the US.

“There are those who bend over backwards to ratchet up tensions and continue the witch-hunt. This is necessary so relations remain in a state of degradation,” he said.

Rossiya 24 also cited a WikiLeaks tweet, arguing that the reports’ “style, facts and dates show no credibility”. The news channel said Trump was being hounded by the media and politicians.



Other Russian media dismissed the allegations in the dossier as groundless. State news agency Tass published a long article about “what’s wrong with the spy dossier”, and several Russian media outlets covered unlikely claims that the entire dossier was fabricated by 4chan users.

An anchor on state TV Channel One, referring to the initial CNN report on the dossier, said: “American media, which support the Democrats, aren’t missing the opportunity to complicate the president-elect’s life as much as possible. The television channel CNN has put out the latest false story against Donald Trump ahead of his press conference.”

Nikolai Kovalyov, an MP and former director of Russia’s main security service, the FSB, also denied that Moscow had any compromising information on Trump.



“We don’t have such a practice in Russia; I can refer to my own work experience,” Kovalyov told the news agency Interfax. “There’s the sense that the Obama administration is throwing all its forces at compromising the winner of the presidential race, and they think that all tools are good.”

He also said Trump’s opponents “have enough compromising material at home”.

As the day went on, more and more Russian officials derided the dossier’s assertions. Foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russian embassy official Mikhail Kulagin had left Washington as part of a planned rotation rather than being suddenly called back over fears his involvement in the Russian effort to influence the election would be exposed, as the dossier alleged. She called the reports “mind-numbing gibberish” and “inhumane nonsense”.

Another Russian MP, Sergei Zheleznyak, told Rossiya 24 he was confident that attempts to discredit Trump would fail and that the American people would unify behind their new president.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of the nationalist party LDPR, called the reports an “attempt ahead of time to cause a quarrel between the new president of the United States” and Russia, arguing no one in Russia could have thought in 2013 to collect compromising material on Trump.

Many Russian journalists and activists were worried by a line in the reports that said the FSB had cracked the popular encrypted messenger software Telegram. The software’s developer, Pavel Durov, said the line probably referred to a 2016 incident in which opposition activists’ accounts were hacked, apparently after text messages to authorise the service were intercepted.

Ritz-Carlton: staff silent at five-star hotel in Moscow

The Ritz-Carlton hotel where a Russian security agency allegedly collected compromising information on Trump with hidden cameras in 2013 is one of the most expensive places to stay in Moscow.

Built for $350m (£290m) in 2007 on Moscow’s most important street, Tverskaya, the Ritz-Carlton was the capital’s first premium luxury hotel. The site it occupies across from the Kremlin held a travellers’ tavern in the 18th century, the Hotel Paris in the 19th century and the landmark Intourist hotel in the 20th century. The hotel has 334 rooms, including 65 luxury suites, as well as high-end restaurants, a rooftop lounge and even a vodka sommelier.

The 240-sq-metre (2,550-sq-ft) presidential suite where Barack Obama and then Trump allegedly stayed costs 1m roubles (£13,700) a night. Remodelled in 2015, it includes a living room with a grand piano and library, a kitchen and dining room, a sauna and jacuzzi, marble bathrooms and panoramic windows overlooking the Kremlin and Red Square.

Trump alluded to the Ritz Carlton when he vehemently denied the allegations contained in the dossier during his press conference on Wednesday. He had always been aware of spying in hotel rooms, he said, adding: “I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way.”

On Wednesday, staff declined to speak to reporters and said the presidential suite could only be viewed by those who had booked it. Well-dressed guests speaking a variety of languages were drinking tea in the gilded lounge beneath the grand staircase as luxury cars pulled up outside. A tourist took a selfie in front of its imposing stone columns.

Asked about the Trump reports, the press service later said it did not comment on hotel guests.