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Russia has voiced hope the US administration will not publish private conversations between the two nations' presidents, like it did with Ukraine.
Key points:
- A Kremlin spokesman called the release of the US-Ukraine call "quite unusual"
- The spokesman said such calls were usually classified
- Russian politicians have mocked the launch of impeachment inquiry in the US
The rough transcript of US President Donald Trump's call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy released by the White House this week shows Mr Trump urged Ukraine to "look into" his Democratic political rival Joe Biden. The July 25 call is now the focus of a US impeachment probe.
Asked if Moscow was worried the White House could similarly publish transcripts of Mr Trump's calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said "we would like to hope that it wouldn't come to that in our relations, which are already troubled by a lot of problems".
Speaking in a conference call with reporters, he emphasised the publication of the Trump-Zelenskiy call was an internal US issue, but added it was "quite unusual" to release a confidential call between leaders.
"The materials related to conversations between heads of states are usually classified according to normal international practice," he said.
'We are waiting for the party to continue'
The publication of the call, in which the presidents made critical comments about German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, has drawn acerbic comments from other Russian officials and politicians.
"We are waiting for the party to continue," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
"Let them publish transcripts of conversations between NATO allies. It would also be useful to publish minutes of closed meetings at the CIA, the FBI and the Pentagon. Put it all on air!"
Ms Zakharova also scoffed at Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to open an impeachment inquiry based on the call.
"Is it the Democrats' job to make a laughing stock of the United States?" she said.
"It's exactly what Ms Pelosi has done to Congress, the White House and other state institutions."
In the past, Mr Putin and his officials similarly derided US special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Kremlin interference in the 2016 US presidential election, casting it as a failure and shrugging off Mr Mueller's exposure of evidence of Russian meddling in the vote.
Mr Mueller found there was not enough evidence to establish a conspiracy between Mr Trump's campaign and Russia, but he charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers with breaking into Democratic Party computers and the email accounts of officials with Hillary Clinton's campaign.
ABC/AP
Topics: donald-trump, us-elections, world-politics, russian-federation, ukraine, united-states
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