Russian president Vladimir Putin has accused the outgoing US administration of trying to undermine Donald Trump by spreading fake allegations and said those who are doing it are “worse than prostitutes”.
The statement reflected the Kremlin’s boiling anger at President Barack Obama’s administration, which declined to comment on Mr Putin’s accusation.
Asked about an unsubstantiated dossier outlining unverified claims that Mr Trump engaged in sexual activities with prostitutes at a Moscow hotel, Mr Putin dismissed it as “fake” and “nonsense” and said it was part of efforts by Mr Obama’s administration to “undermine the legitimacy of the president-elect” despite his “convincing” victory.
Mr Trump earlier rejected the sexual allegations as “fake news” and “phony stuff”.
Mr Putin’s broadside at the White House reveals a culmination of tensions between Moscow and Washington, which have built up over the Ukrainian crisis, the Syrian war and the allegations of Russian meddling in the US election.
“People who order such fakes against the US president-elect, fabricate them and use them in political struggle are worse than prostitutes,” he said.
“They have no moral restrictions whatsoever, and it highlights a significant degree of degradation of political elites in the West, including in the United States. ”
He spoke in Moscow during a news conference following talks with the president of Moldova.
The Russian leader ridiculed the authors of the Trump dossier for alleging that Russian spy agencies were collecting compromising material on Mr Trump when he visited Moscow in 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant.
“He wasn’t a politician, we didn’t even know about his political ambitions,” Mr Putin said.
“Do they think that our special services are hunting for every US billionaire? ”
Mr Putin also sarcastically suggested that Mr Trump, who met the world’s most beautiful women at the pageant, had a better choice for female companionship than Moscow prostitutes, even though Mr Putin claimed “they are also the best in the world”.
He said Mr Trump’s foes are ready to go as far as to “stage a Maidan in Washington to prevent Trump from entering office”, in reference to the alleged US role in organising protests in the main square of the Ukrainian capital, the Maidan, which forced the nation’s Russia-friendly president from power in 2014.
“People who are doing that are inflicting a colossal damage to the interests of the United States,” Mr Putin said.
He also charged that those spreading allegations against Mr Trump want to “bind the president-elect hand and foot to prevent him from fulfilling his election promises”.
“How can you do anything to improve US-Russian relations when they launch such canards as hackers’ interference in the election? ” he said.
Mr Putin voiced hope that “common sense will prevail” and Russia and the United States will be able to normalise their relations once Mr Trump takes office on Friday.
He said he does not know Mr Trump and has no interests in defending him.
“I don’t know Mr Trump. I have never met him and I don’t know what he will do on the international arena,” Mr Putin said.
“I have no reason whatsoever to assail him, criticise him for something, or defend him. ”
At a separate news conference on Tuesday, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow hopes for better relations with the United States based on respect for mutual interests once Mr Trump takes office, in contrast with the “messianic” approach of the outgoing US administration that he said has ravaged ties.
Mr Lavrov said Russia and the United States can reach common ground on nuclear arms control and other issues if each country proceeds from its national interests and shows respect for the other side.
He voiced hope that Mr Trump’s team will consist of pragmatic people “who will not engage in moralising and will try to understand the interests of their partners just as they clearly uphold their own interests”.
Mr Lavrov denounced the foreign policies of the outgoing Obama administration and its allies as “messianic” attempts to enforce Western values on the rest of the world, which has led to instability and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere.
He said Moscow is inviting representatives of the incoming US administration to attend talks on Syria in Kazakhstan on Monday, discussions brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran.
He voiced hope that Russian and US experts could start discussions on fighting terrorism in Syria during that meeting.
Asked to comment on Mr Trump’s recent remarks in which he indicated he could end sanctions imposed on Russia in the aftermath of its 2014 annexation of Crimea in return for a nuclear arms reduction deal, Mr Lavrov said Russia was ready to sit down for nuclear arms talks with the US.
He noted he did not see Mr Trump’s words as an offer to cut arms in exchange for cancelling the sanctions, rather as an expression of readiness to look at reviewing the sanctions while engaging in negotiations on arms control, among other issues.
Mr Lavrov added that, along with nuclear arsenals, the agenda for such negotiations should include new hypersonic weapons, missile defence, the weaponisation of space and other issues.
Like Mr Putin, Mr Lavrov rejected allegations of Russian meddling in the US election as “absurdities” and “fakes” intended to hurt Mr Trump.
He said US intelligence agencies have failed to produce any evidence to back those claims, adding that officials who engaged in the effort “deserve to be fired, as they receive their salaries for nothing”.
Mr Lavrov described the allegations of Russian election meddling in the US vote as the final “spasms of those who realise that their time is coming to an end”.
“The time of foreign policy demagogues is over, and, feeling hurt, they fabricate all kinds of fakes,” he said.
“First, officials leak fakes to the media, then media start spinning them and, finally, officials comment on them as facts. ”
Mr Lavrov also denounced a dossier on Mr Trump compiled by a former British spy as a “rude provocation”, contemptuously referring to its author as a “runaway swindler from MI6” without citing his name.
In a reflection of the bad blood between Mr Obama’s administration and the Kremlin, Mr Lavrov accused US officials of making repeated attempts to recruit Russian diplomats in the United States as spies, including a deputy chief of mission.
He called the attempts “cynical” and “unprecedented”.
AP

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Global stocks fell further Tuesday after Britain said Prime Minister Theresa May will announce London plans to withdraw completely from the European Union.
KEEPING SCORE: Germany’s DAX index lost 0.7 percent to 11,477.37 and France’s CAC-40 shed 0.6 percent to 4,855.55. London’s FTSE 100 lost 0.3 percent to 7,306.16. On Wall Street, the future for the Dow Jones industrial average lost 0.3 percent and that for the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 0.4 percent. U. S. markets were closed Monday for a holiday.
ASIA’S DAY: Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index lost 1.5 percent to 18,813.53 and the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.2 percent to 3,108.77. Sydney’s S&P-ASX 200 fell 0.9 percent to 5,699.40 and New Zealand also declined. Seoul’s Kospi added 0.4 percent to 3,071.87. Benchmarks in Taiwan, Indonesia and Bangkok gained while Singapore fell.
BREXIT: The British government said May, in a speech Tuesday, will announce London wants a clean break with the European Union and will not seek to remain “half-in, half-out. ” Fears about the impact of a British withdrawal have roiled global markets since Britain’s public voted in June to leave the common market. The British pound has lost one-fifth of its value since then. Excerpts of May’s speech released by her office say she will call for a new relationship with the EU and promise Britain will expand international ties.
STERLING: The British currency edged up to $1.2119 after tumbling Monday to $1.2061 — its lowest level since October, when a “flash crash” pushed it to a 31-year low against the dollar.
EXPERT VIEW: “Despite the pound-dollar having declined to levels below the flash crash in October, the market appears to be bracing for further deterioration of conditions,” said Jinyi Pan of IG in a report. “Tough rhetoric from PM Theresa May, citing that the UK will not be ‘half-in-, half-out’ of the EU paints a worrying picture for trade relations and the hub-status of the UK in the Eurozone. ”
CHINA’S UPGRADE: The International Monetary Fund raised its growth forecast for China but warned about rising debt that has prompted concern about the country’s finances. The IMF said the world’s second-largest economy should expand by 6.5 percent this year, up 0.3 percentage points from its last forecast in October. However, growth is supported by government spending and surging credit, which “raises the risk of a sharper slowdown,” the agency said. The report adds to mounting warnings about the economic drag of debt that has soared since the 2008 global crisis as Beijing used infusions of credit to shore up growth.
ENERGY: Benchmark U. S. crude gained 18 cents to $52.55 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 64 cents on Monday to close at $52.37. Brent crude, used to price international oils, rose 2 cents to $55.87 in London. It lost 39 cents the previous session to $55.86.
CURRENCY: The dollar declined to 113.11 yen from Monday’s 113.94. The euro gained to $1.0663 from $1.0613.

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Tuesday, 17 January 2017 07:59
Australia, China, Malaysia say unable to solve one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history.
The deep-sea search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 ended on Tuesday without any trace being found of the plane that vanished in 2014 with 239 people on board, the three countries involved in the search said.
The location of Flight MH370 has become one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries since the plane disappeared en route to Beijing from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.
“Despite every effort using the best science available … the search has not been able to locate the aircraft,” Malaysian, Australian and Chinese authorities said in a statement.
The last search vessel left the area on Tuesday, the three countries said, after scouring the 120,000sq km area of the Indian Ocean sea floor that has been the focus of the almost three-year search.
Malaysia, Australia and China agreed in July to suspend the search if the plane was not found or new evidence uncovered once that area had been checked.
Australia last month dismissed an investigators’ recommendation to shift the search further north, saying that no new evidence had emerged to support that.
A next-of-kin support group called Voice 370 said in a statement that investigators could not leave the matter unsolved.
“In our view, extending the search to the new area defined by the experts is an inescapable duty owed to the flying public in the interest of aviation safety,” Voice 370 said.
Most of the passengers were from China.
The only confirmed traces of the plane have been three pieces of debris found washed up on Mauritius, the French island Reunion and an island off the coast of Tanzania.
As many as 30 other pieces of wreckage found there and on beaches in Mozambique, Tanzania and South Africa are suspected to have come from the plane.
Families of victims ‘dismayed’
Voice 370 criticised the decision not to search waters north of the existing search zone based on a new analysis.
It called on the three nations to reverse their decision, while acknowledging the “tremendous effort” of the governments involved in the search.
Chandrika Sharma, an Indian national, was one of the 239 people on board Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 when it crashed.
Her husband, KS Narendran, said it was “mind-boggling” that Australia would not search an area north of the existing search zone where experts recently concluded the plane probably crashed.
Authorities want more specific information about the plane’s location.
Narendran said the families involved expect to one day get a “credible explanation to what has happened” even if they never see their loved ones again.
Without an explanation, Narendan said he feels there is a “good chance that this could happen in the future”.
The husband of a flight attendant, meanwhile, said he was extremely disappointed.
Lee Khim Fatt said that he still holds a small glimmer of hope that his wife, Foong Wai Yueng, is still alive somewhere.
Lee said that he has held no memorial for his wife and that all her possessions in their house have remained untouched.
“I told my children to keep praying. As long as nothing is found, nothing is proven,” Lee said. His two children are aged 7 and 13.

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It was at Lancaster House in 1988 that Margaret Thatcher delivered a speech heralding British membership of the single market. Twenty eight years later, at the same venue, Theresa May confirmed the UK’s retreat.
As had been clear ever since her Brexit speech in October, May recognises that her primary objective of controlling immigration is incompatible with continued membership. Inside the single market, she noted, the UK would still have to accept free movement and the rulings of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). “It would to all intents and purposes mean not leaving the EU at all,” May surmised.
The Prime Minister also confirmed, as anticipated, that the UK would no longer remain a full member of the Customs Union. “We want to get out into the wider world, to trade and do business all around the globe,” May declared.
But she also recognises that a substantial proportion of this will continue to be with Europe (the destination for half of current UK exports). Her ambition, she declared, was “a new, comprehensive, bold and ambitious Free Trade Agreement”. May added that she wanted either “a completely new customs agreement” or associate membership of the Customs Union.
Though the Prime Minister has long ruled out free movement and the acceptance of ECJ jurisdiction, she has not pledged to end budget contributions. But in her speech she diminished this potential concession, warning that the days when the UK provided “vast” amounts were over.
Having signalled what she wanted to take from the EU, what did May have to give? She struck a notably more conciliatory tone, emphasising that it was “overwhelmingly and compellingly in Britain’s national interest that the EU should succeed”. The day after Donald Trump gleefully predicted the institution’s demise, her words were in marked contrast to those of the president-elect.
In an age of Isis and Russian revanchism, May also emphasised the UK’s “unique intelligence capabilities” which would help to keep “people in Europe safe from terrorism”. She added: “At a time when there is growing concern about European security, Britain’s servicemen and women, based in European countries including Estonia, Poland and Romania, will continue to do their duty. We are leaving the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe.”
The EU’s defining political objective is to ensure that others do not follow the UK out of the club. The rise of nationalists such as Marine Le Pen, Alternative für Deutschland and the Dutch Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom) has made Europe less, rather than more, amenable to British demands. In this hazardous climate, the UK cannot be seen to enjoy a cost-free Brexit.
May’s wager is that the price will not be excessive. She warned that a “punitive deal that punishes Britain” would be “an act of calamitous self-harm”. But as Greece can testify, economic self-interest does not always trump politics.
Unlike David Cameron, however, who merely stated that he “ruled nothing out” during his EU renegotiation, May signalled that she was prepared to walk away. “No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain,” she declared. Such an outcome would prove economically calamitous for the UK, forcing it to accept punitively high tariffs. But in this face-off, May’s gamble is that Brussels will blink first.
Theresa May will outline her approach to Britain’s Brexit deal in a much-hyped speech later today , with a 12-point plan for Brexit.
The headlines: her vow that Britain will not be “half in, half out” and border control will come before our membership of the single market.
And the PM will unveil a new flavour of Brexit: not hard, not soft, but “clean” aka hard but with better PR.
“Britain’s clean break from EU” is the i ’s splash, “My 12-point plan for Brexit” is the Telegraph ’s, “We Will Get Clean Break From EU” cheers the Express , “Theresa’s New Free Britain” roars the Mail , “May: We’ll Go It Alone With CLEAN Brexit” is the Metro ’s take. The Guardian goes for the somewhat more subdued “ May rules out UK staying in single market” as their splash while the Sun opts for “Great Brexpectations”.
You might, at this point, be grappling with a sense of déjà vu. May’s new approach to the Brexit talks is pretty much what you’d expect from what she’s said since getting the keys to Downing Street, as I wrote back in October. Neither of her stated red lines, on border control or freeing British law from the European Court of Justice, can be met without taking Britain out of the single market aka a hard Brexit in old money.
What is new is the language on the customs union, the only area where May has actually been sparing on detail. The speech will make it clear that after Brexit, Britain will want to strike its own trade deals, which means that either an unlikely exemption will be carved out, or, more likely, that the United Kingdom will be out of the European Union, the single market and the customs union.
(As an aside, another good steer about the customs union can be found in today’s row between Boris Johnson and the other foreign ministers of the EU27. He is under fire for vetoing an EU statement in support of a two-state solution, reputedly to curry favour with Donald Trump. It would be strange if Downing Street was shredding decades of British policy on the Middle East to appease the President-Elect if we weren’t going to leave the customs union in order at the end of it.)
But what really matters isn’t what May says today but what happens around Europe over the next few months. Donald Trump’s attacks on the EU and Nato yesterday will increase the incentive on the part of the EU27 to put securing the political project front-and-centre in the Brexit talks, making a good deal for Britain significantly less likely.
Add that to the unforced errors on the part of the British government, like Amber Rudd’s wheeze to compile lists of foreign workers, and the diplomatic situation is not what you would wish to secure the best Brexit deal, to put it mildly.
Clean Brexit? Nah. It’s going to get messy.

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