Russia says Putin-Trump meeting was 'better than super'

Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov hails 'fabulous' summit as US president faces storm of criticism in Washington

Vladimir Putin’s meeting with Donald Trump went “better than super,” Russia’s top diplomat has said.

The leaders’ summit in Helsinki was “fabulous”, declared foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, as the US president faced a storm of criticism in Washington.

The remarks, reported by Russian news agencies, summed up the mood in Mr Putin’s government after Mr Trump sided with the Kremlin over his own intelligence agencies by insisting there was “no reason” Russia would interfere in the US election.

While Moscow secured no major concessions during the meeting, the Russian media depicted Mr Putin as having “outmanoeuvred” his American counterpart.

“Trump has failed to dominate Putin,” wrote the pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

The tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets said “a quiet, modest Trump had paled in comparison with Vladimir Putin. It’s clear that Putin outmanoeuvred the US president.”

During a press conference following Monday’s meeting, Mr Trump said he had been swayed by Mr Putin’s “strong, impressive denial” of meddling in the 2016 presidential vote.

The American leader said he saw “no reason” why Moscow would involve itself in the election, despite his own intelligence agencies’ conclusions to the contrary and the Russian president admitting he had wanted Mr Trump to win.

He nodded as Mr Putin dismissed accusations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin as “utter nonsense”.

Mr Trump’s performance sparked outrage in Washington, where even some Republicans branded him “treasonous” and a former White House ethics chief called for his removal from office.

But for Moscow, the meeting was a propaganda victory and the opportunity to improve relations after years of US-Russia tensions.

Mr Putin sought to emphasise areas where Moscow and Washington could find some common ground, such as the Syrian crisis.

“This is the first important step towards establishing a political dialogue,” said Valentina Matvienko, speaker of the Upper House of the Russian parliament.

Alexander Gabuev, of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, said Mr Putin had won over domestic audiences by pushing back against the election interference allegations.

“Nobody in Moscow who is realistic had any illusions that this one meeting can produce any breakthroughs,” said Mr Gabuev. “The hope was at least we can start talking to each other.”

The main result of the summit “is that it happened, despite the collapse that Russian-American relations are in,” Valery Garbuzov, head of the USA and Canada Institute in Moscow, told Komsomoskaya Pravda.

“You can say it’s not much, but neither Putin nor Trump could do more.”