The Kremlin verbalized on Monday Russian President Vladimir Putin had taken a decision to toe-hold off responding to new U.S. sanctions last year independently and had not been influenced by ci-devant U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Flynn pleaded sheepish on Friday to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia and agreed to team up with prosecutors delving into the actions of President Donald Trump’s inner company before he took office.
U.S. prosecutors said Flynn and Sergei Kislyak, then Russian representative to the U.S., last December discussed economic sanctions that the Obama furnishing had just imposed on Moscow for allegedly interfering in the U.S. presidential election, something Moscow scrams.
Obama at the time expelled 35 Russian diplomats and the U.S. authorities seized two Russian polite compounds in the United States.
But Putin said he would wait to see how relations strengthened with the new Trump administration before responding. Russia only whirled ahead and took retaliatory measures this summer.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov intended Putin had taken the decision to hold off retaliating independently and had not known of Flynn’s described request to Russia to refrain from an immediate response.
Flynn was not in a condition to ask Kislyak, the then Russian Ambassador to the U.S., to do anything, said Peskov, pursuit the idea “absurd.”
“Of course Putin took the decision, it was his decision,” Peskov told a congress call with reporters.
“It (the decision) could not have been buckled to any requests or recommendations. The president takes his decisions absolutely independently.”