“We have zero personal relationship,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday at the Russian Energy Week conference in Moscow. | Alexander Zemlianichenko/Getty Images Putin: I have 'zero personal relationship' with Trump

Russian President Vladimir Putin distanced himself from President Donald Trump on Wednesday, dismissing the U.S. president as a man he’s met once but has no personal relationship with.

“We have zero personal relationship,” Putin said Wednesday at the Russian Energy Week conference in Moscow, according to Bloomberg Politics. “We’ve met only once.”


Trump has sought to establish warmer ties with Russia, apparently to little avail. He met privately with Putin for two hours at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, in July. And even after publicly accepting the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential election with the aim of boosting Trump, the president has continued to downplay the Russia-cyberattack narrative and ensuing investigations into whether his associates colluded with Russian agents as a “hoax.”

Putin did praise Trump as someone who will “never be anybody’s hostage” but indicated that relations between Moscow and Washington, D.C., have been soured by domestic political fighting in the U.S.

Putin also insisted that Iran is complying with a nuclear agreement the U.S., Russia and other world powers agreed to in 2015 — Trump may decertify the Iran deal — and warned that Trump’s fiery rhetoric toward North Korea is leading to a “very dangerous end.”

“Those who try to speak to North Korea from a position of strength only shore up the North Korean regime,” Putin said.