A former Navy rear admiral who has served as the spokesperson for Pentagon and the State Department explained why Russian President Vladimir Putin may no longer want to deal with Donald Trump.

“I think there’s probably a case to be made that Putin looks at Trump perhaps as damaged goods as a result of the impact of the Mueller investigation,” retired Admiral John Kirby told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

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The White House, Blitzer noted, has claimed that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is “undermining” the US-Russia relationship — but as Kirby pointed out, that has much more to do with the Kremlin itself.

“Russia is why the US-Russia relationship is in bad shape. It’s their interference in our election,” the former Obama administration official said. “Their aggression in Ukraine and the failure to help bring civil war in Syria to an end. That’s what’s really driving this relationship down so far as it’s gone.”

Trump, he added, is “distracted” and is also “causing problems bilaterally and multilaterally because he can’t let go.”

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