(Newswire.net — December 24, 2016) —“Dear Mr. Trump, please accept my warmest Christmas and New Year greetings.” This is the first sentence in the letter which Trump received from Putin last week, and that the president-elect’s team shared on Friday, December 23rd.
Donald Trump said in a statement that he received a very nice letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin and that the thoughts of the Russian President are “so correct”.
“I hope both sides are able to live up to these thoughts, and we do not have to travel an alternate path,” Trump said.
In the letter, among other things, Putin wrote that he advocates for bilateral cooperation and a new level of US-Russian relations.
“Serious global and regional challenges which our countries have to face in recent years, show that Relations between Russia and the U.S. remain an important factor in ensuring stability and security of the modern world”, wrote Putin.
The Russian president also expressed his hope for future actions after Trump assumes the position of the President of the United States of America “by acting in a constructive and pragmatic manner – to take real steps to restore the framework of bilateral cooperation in different areas as well as bring our level of collaboration on the international scene to a qualitatively new level.”
The letter is dated December 15th, and was confirmed as authentic by Moscow.
It comes days after Russia loudly voiced complaints about its relationship with the US under the Obama administration, and after ambiguous remarks from Trump about the need to “strengthen and expand” US nuclear capability to counter nuclear adversaries, reports CNN.
Putin said, at his annual year-end news conference on Thursday, December 22nd, that the US and Russia need to discuss possible ways to normalize relations between the two countries.
Also, during his election campaign, Donald Trump agreed with Putin saying that they couldn’t be worse and showed that there is a mutual interest for improvement on both sides.