Putin believes there is a chance to restore relations with US
"I hope very much (that the relationship between Moscow and Washington will recover - TASS), and it seems to me that a certain groundwork for this has been laid," he told a press conference following the G20 summit in Hamburg on Saturday.
Putin has said that he has been able to establish personal relations with US President Donald Trump and this may help restore bilateral relations. "As for personal relations, I believe that they have been established," the Russian leader said, TASS reports.
"I don't know how this may sound but I'll say what I see: Trump on TV differs very strongly from the real person," Putin said, explaining that the US president "is an absolutely concrete person who perceives an interlocutor absolutely adequately, analyzes quickly enough and responds to the formulated questions or some new elements that arise during a discussion."
"It seems to me that if we build relations in the manner, in which our talk proceeded yesterday, there are all the grounds to believe that we will be able at least partially to restore the level of interaction that we need," the Russian president said.
US elections
Putin has said that his US counterpart Donald Trump repeatedly raised the issue of Moscow's alleged interference in the US elections at a meeting on Friday.
According to the Russian leader, Trump took note of the arguments that Moscow had never meddled in the US political process and, probably, agreed with them.
"He [Trump] asked many questions on this issue. I answered all these questions as far as I was able to answer them. It seems to me that he took note of this and agreed but you should ask him about how he perceived this," Putin told journalists.
Putin said on Saturday he believed that US leader Donald Trump was content with information on Russia's non-interference in the US presidential elections.
"He [Trump] started to ask suggestive questions and he was really interested in some details. And I answered all these questions as far as I was able to answer them in detail," the Russian leader said, speaking on Russia's non-interference in the US presidential elections.
"It seemed to me that he was content with these answers," the Russian leader said.
US journalists asked Putin to tell them about the details of his meeting with Trump and about that part of the talk that related to the 2016 presidential campaign in the United States.
"You should ask about how he [Trump] perceived this, perceived my answers while with regard to what had happened - nothing had occurred as we had not meddled," the Russian leader said.
The American journalists lamented that they actually had no information on this score from the US White House. "We'll strongly indicate this to them," Putin said jokingly.
After that, the Russian leader switched to a serious tone and said that in his talk with Trump he even retold him the dialogues held with the previous administration led by Barack Obama.
"I don't think I have the right to tell the details [of the talk] with President Obama. This is not accepted in world practice at this level. Likewise, it would be incorrect to tell you in details about my talk with President Trump," the Russian leader noted.
As Putin said, "He [Trump] asked me and I answered him, he asked suggestive questions and I explained them."
Putin called important his agreement with Trump that "there shouldn't be the situation of uncertainty in these spheres, especially in the future."
The Russian president noted that he had mentioned this at the G20 summit's last session devoted to economic digitalization as this had relation to cyberspace and the Internet.
"We agreed with the US president that we would set up a working group and will work together on how to jointly control security in the field of cyberspace and how to ensure the full compliance with international law norms in this sphere, how to prevent interference in the internal affairs of foreign states - the talk is primarily about Russia and the United States," the Russian leader said.
"We believe that if we manage to organize this work - and I have no grounds to doubt this - then there will be no more speculations on this issue," the Russian president said.
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