President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday an unsubstantiated report that alleged Russia had gathered compromising material on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump was a hoax, and slammed those who are propagating the allegations as "worse than prostitutes."
Putin, who reiterated he had never met Trump, said he hoped that Moscow and Washington could eventually get their troubled relations back to normal.
He also insisted that the accusations that Trump engaged in sexual acts with prostitutes while in Moscow are "fake" and "nonsense."
"I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world," Putin said, according to Bloomberg News.
"It highlights a significant degree of degradation of political elites in the West, including in the United States," he said. "Do they think that our special services are hunting for every U.S. billionaire?"