US President Donald Trump declined to answer a question about whether he discussed during a recent phone conversation with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, allegations of attempts attributed to Moscow to offer Afghan militants monetary rewards for killing US soldiers. At the same time, he called the conversation itself very productive.
"We don't talk about what we are discussing," he said, referring to a corresponding question from a reporter during an event in North Carolina.
"But we had a lot of discussions. I think it was very productive, " Trump added.
Allegations of payments to the Taliban
The New York Times published an article on June 26, according to which a certain unit of Russian military intelligence encouraged militants of the radical Taliban movement (banned in the Russian Federation) to attack soldiers of the international coalition in Afghanistan. The publication claimed that such conclusions of the US intelligence services were presented to US President Donald Trump "several months ago", and the National Security Council at the White House allegedly discussed this topic at the end of March.
In turn, the press secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov called the mentioned statements a lie and an "absolute hoax". On June 27, the Russian Foreign Ministry described the first publication on this topic in the American press as containing deliberately false information. As the Foreign Ministry pointed out, "this simple throw-in clearly illustrates the low intellectual abilities of propagandists from American intelligence, who instead of inventing something more reliable have to come up with such nonsense."
Trump, who represents the Republican party, wrote on Twitter on June 28 that the US intelligence service recognized unreliable information about attempts attributed to Moscow to offer a reward to Afghan militants for the murders of American soldiers. He suggested that The New York Times, the first newspaper to publish this data, could arrange "another fabricated hoax on the topic of Russia" to smear the Republicans.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: official website of the President of the Russian Federation
Based on materials from TASS