By Elena Teslova
MOSCOW (AA) - Pushing back against US President Donald Trump's "paper tiger" remark, a Kremlin spokesperson said on Wednesday that Russia “maintains its resilience and macroeconomic stability.”
"Russia isn’t a tiger at all. It’s still much more associated with a bear. There are no paper bears, and Russia is indeed a real bear," Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with Russian RBK radio station.
"Here there's nothing made of paper; Russia maintains its resilience and macroeconomic stability," Peskov added.
He added that Putin has many times compared Russia to a bear "in various emotional tones."
Peskov, however, said that Putin “continues to highly value Trump's readiness to assist and work together toward finding solutions.”
Asked about the possibility of a meeting between Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky. Peskov said such an encounter without proper preparation would be "nothing more than a PR stunt doomed to failure."
"However, Putin emphasized that it makes sense to meet only after both sides have done their homework and preparations at the expert level are completed. Meeting unprepared would rather be a PR move destined for failure," he said.