Reuters learned about 18 previously unknown contacts of Trump's associates with the Russian authorities

Former US Presidential Advisor Michael Flynn and other representatives of the campaign headquarters of the current American leader Donald Trump contacted Russian officials and other people associated with the Kremlin at least 18 times over the past seven months of the 2016 presidential race. We are talking about calls and letters.

Reuters reported and former officials from the USA, familiar with episodes of information exchange. According to the agency, previously not disclosed contacts about contacts are part of the report, which is now being reviewed by the FBI and Congress, investigating Russia's intervention in the US presidential election and contacts between representatives of Trump’s campaign headquarters and Russian authorities.

Six of the previously not mentioned contacts, which Reuters became known, were telephone calls between the Russian Ambassador to the USA Sergey Kislyak and Trump advisers, including Flynn, three current and former officials said.

- Is the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, who found himself in the center of the scandal with Flynn?

The conversations between Flynn and Kislyak became more frequent after the election on November 8, when they discussed the creation of the feedback channel between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin bypassing the US National Security Bureaucracy, which both parties considered it hostile to improve relations, "four existing American officials said.

Kum Putin contacted the Trump team

Another 12 contacts took place between Russian officials or people who were considered close to Putin, and advisers from Trump's headquarters, Reuters notes. One of them was a Ukrainian businessman and politician, Kum Putin (the President of the Russian Federation baptized the daughter of businessman Daria. - Note Newsru.com ) Viktor Medvedchuk, three sources of the agency, familiar with the situation.

According to the interlocutors, it is not known with whom exactly Medvedchuk maintained contacts in the Trump team. At the same time, sources noted that the parties discussed cooperation between the United States and Russia.

At the same time, Medvedchuk himself denies any contacts with Trump headquarters. “I am not familiar with anyone from Donald Trump’s close circle, so there could be such a conversation,” said Reuters businessman in an email.

Sources did not see violations in the contacts described by them

At the same time, Reuters sources said they did not see a violation or conspiracy between the Trump team and Russia in the contacts of the parties considered to date. Nevertheless, the opened facts can increase pressure on Trump and his assistants in order to provide the FBI and Congress with a full report on interaction with Russian officials and other persons related to the Kremlin during and immediately after the 2016 elections.

18 calls and electronic messages are dated to the period from April to November 2016, that is, it was precisely when the hackers carried out the fact that, according to the conclusion of American intelligence in January 2017, was part of the Kremlin campaign to discredit the electoral process in the United States and the influence of the election for the victory of Trump over his Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In the course of these contacts, the main attention was paid to the normalization of the economic relations of Russia and the United States, aggravated due to the imposition of sanctions against Moscow, cooperation in the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group, which is banned in the Russian Federation, in Syria and the restraint of more decisive China, RETRS sources said.

The White House did not respond to Reuters a request for comments. Flynn's lawyer refused to comment on the agency’s message. The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow also did not comment and transferred Reuters to the Trump administration. The press secretary of the Russian Embassy in Washington said: "We do not comment on our daily contacts with local interlocutors."

In early April, The Washington Post reported an attempt to organize an unofficial communication channel between Trump and Putin even before the billionaire inauguration. As the publication wrote, for this purpose the united Arab emirates on January 11, the founder of the American private security company Blackwater Eric Prince, who has contacts with Trump advisers, was organized with a Russian, close to the President of the Russian Federation.

In early March, the White House admitted that before Trump’s inauguration, Kislyak met not only Flynn, but also the son -in -law of the US President and now his senior adviser Jared Kushner. Communication took place in December last year and lasted about 20 minutes.

Then the USA Today newspaper called two more people from the team of the current US president who communicated with the Russian ambassador - these are advisers to the election headquarters of Trump Jeffrey Gordon and Carter Page. The conversation occurred at the National Congress of Republicans in Cleveland in July last year. Gordon, in a conversation with the publication, called it an "informal conversation."

In addition, the US prosecutor general Jeff Sessnes confirmed the information that appeared in the media that he met with Kislyak in July and last September, when he was a senator from Alabam, a member of the Senate Committee in the Armed Forces and Trump adviser on foreign policy.

Flynn in mid -February was fired from his post as an adviser to the US President in National Security with a scandal. In December, Flynn, during negotiations with Kislyak, discussed the issue of anti -Russian sanctions imposed by the Barack Obama administration at the end of last year. The media later said that Flynn allegedly gave the Kremlin a signal that Moscow could count on the softening of restrictive measures.

Flynn himself first categorically denied that the topic of sanctions was touched on in conversations with the Russian ambassador, but later his spokeswoman explained that Trump's adviser “did not remember the fact of discussion of sanctions, but cannot be sure that this topic was never rose in conversations.” In the evening of February 13, Trump accepted the resignation of Flynn. The White House statement spoke of the loss of the president’s confidence in the official.

The fact that American intelligence conducts a large -scale investigation of the alleged ties of Trump's associates with Russian officials, the press reported on the day of Trump's inauguration. A few days later it turned out that the check was carried out, in particular, with respect to Flynn.