...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
’s foreign policy approach was "phenomenally close" to that of President Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President and sixth of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead..., giving Russia hope that tattered US-Russia relations could gradually be improved.
Kremlin front man Dmitry Peskov, speaking in New York, said he saw incredible similarities between the two men’s foreign policy ideas, and this meant there was a solid basis to start a meaningful dialogue between Moscow and Washington.
Peskov, in the United States for a chess tournament, said he was struck by how similar parts of Trump’s victory speech were to a speech Putin gave in southern Russia last month.
Both men said they would put their own country’s national interests first, but that they would be ready to develop ties with other nations, depending on how ready other countries were to deepen relations themselves.
"They (Putin and Trump) set out the same main foreign policy principles and that is incredible," Peskov said in comments broadcast by Russian state TV’s Channel One on Thursday evening.
"It is phenomenal how close they are to one another when it comes to their conceptual approach to foreign policy. And that is probably a good basis for our moderate optimism that they will at least be able to start a dialogue to start to clear out the Augean stables in our bilateral relations."
With Moscow and Washington now at odds over Syria, Ukraine and NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis....
, Peskov cautioned that it would take a long time before relations could return to a high level, however, because of how far they had been allowed to deteriorate.
"An atmosphere of mutual trust takes years to achieve," he said. "It’s not possible to just declare that there is an atmosphere of mutual trust, especially after such serious damage was done in the last few years to our relations."
Peskov told the TASS news agency separately that Putin was ready to be flexible when it came to mending ties which he wanted to improve, but that there was a limit to his flexibility and that he would need to see some US reciprocity.
Peskov spoke after one of Russia’s most senior diplomats told the Interfax news agency earlier on Thursday that the Russian government had been in touch with members of Trump’s political team during the US election campaign and knew most of his entourage.