NEW YORK, November 10. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin favors good relations with the United States, seeking to improve them, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said upon his arrival in New York for the opening of the World Chess Championship.
Speaking about prospects for a meeting with US President-Elect Donald Trump, Peskov said "Trump must be first inaugurated as president". He warned against seeing everything through rose-tinted glasses, saying things" won’t be easy".
"Russian President Vladimir Putin pursues consistent and flexible policy, but flexibility has limits," he said. The Russian president "is in favor of good relations, an improvement in relations with the US, we will see to which extent it will be a mutual bid," he said.
"We will have another two months working with the present US administration," he noted. "A possible visit of President Putin to Peru, to an APEC summit, is being prepared. President (Barack) Obama will be there, and although we are not talking about a bilateral meeting, we can anticipate that they will have a possibility to communicate on the sidelines," the Kremlin spokesman added.
"Amazingly close positions"
Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump have really close positions in what concerns political approaches, Peskov told reporters.
He came to New York to attend the opening ceremony of the world chess championship.
Peskov compared Putin's speech at a recent session of the Valdai International Discussions Club and Trump's latest speech.
"Trump said the U.S. interests were the main priority for him and he would be prepared to build a relationship with any country," he said. "Putin said the same thing, but most importantly, he spoke about Russia's national priorities."
"It's amazing how close their conceptual approaches to foreign policy happen to be and this can lay a fair ground for optimism in the sense that the Augean stables in Russian-US relations will finally be cleaned up," Peskov said.
He admitted however that there was no harboring the hopes for a rapid enough rise of the relations to high levels.
"The relations of mutual trust take years to shape up," he said. "It's impossible just to usher in an atmosphere of trustworthiness, all the more so after a chain of traumas these relations have sustained in recent years.".
US Elections
On Election Day, November 8, United States citizens cast their ballots and elected their 45th US President, Donald J. Trump.
By securing more than the needed 270 electoral votes, Trump, the Republican candidate clinched his presidential victory.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday sent a message of greeting to Donald Trump upon his victory in the US presidential election.
As the Kremlin’s press-service said, Putin expressed the hope "for joint work to steer Russian-US relations out of the critical condition and also to address crucial issues on the international agenda and identify effective responses to challenges to global security."
Putin also expressed the certainty that "a constructive dialog between Moscow and Washington, based on the principles of equality, mutual respect and realistic attitude towards each other’s positions meets the interests of the people of our countries and the entire world community.".