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Putin Gets Trump’s Tweets Though He Stays Offline, Kremlin Says

Everything Trump posts on his Twitter account “is regarded in Moscow as his official statements”.

Putin Gets Trump’s Tweets Though He Stays Offline, Kremlin Says
A martyoshka doll showing Donald Trump, U.S. president elect, left, sits beside a doll showing Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, dressed as a military pilot, in a souvenir store in Moscow, Russia. (Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg)

(Bloomberg) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin receives reports of U.S. counterpart Donald Trump’s tweets because they’re considered to be official White House statements, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Everything Trump posts on his Twitter account “is regarded in Moscow as his official statements,” Peskov told reporters on a conference call Tuesday. “Obviously, it’s reported to President Putin, along with other information about the official statements of politicians and heads of state from other countries.”

While it would be wrong for the Kremlin to comment on Trump’s use of the social network, Putin isn’t on Twitter and has said publicly that he’s not interested in tweeting, Peskov said. The president also doesn’t want any officials to run an account on his behalf, he said.

Trump tweets prodigiously, often to the consternation of White House officials who learn of his remarks at the same time as his 44.5 million followers. The president sends streams of messages that attack domestic critics, accuse U.S. media of “fake news” and promote his Make America Great Again agenda.

He’s used Twitter to denounce investigations by Congress and Special Counsel Robert Mueller into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 presidential elections. Trump also got into a spat with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May after he retweeted anti-Muslim videos posted by a far-right group last month.

To contact the reporters on this story: Stepan Kravchenko in Moscow at skravchenko@bloomberg.net, Andrey Biryukov in Moscow at abiryukov5@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Tony Halpin, Paul Abelsky

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