The Kremlin says US charges against President Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide shows Moscow has been unfairly maligned for meddling in last year's US presidential election.
Federal investigators probing alleged Russian interference in the election, something Moscow denies, charged Manafort and another aide, Rick Gates with money laundering on Monday.
The charges, some going back over a decade, centred on Manafort's work for Ukraine's former government, not Russia's.
That was welcomed in Russia where officials are watching the investigation closely.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov highlighted the absence of allegations against Russia in the indictments, saying on Tuesday Moscow always said it never meddled in the US election.
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That assertion is challenged by US intelligence agencies who say unequivocally that Moscow interfered in the November 2016 vote.
"Moscow never felt itself guilty so as to feel exonerated now," Peskov said, when asked whether the Kremlin interpreted the indictment as proof that its repeated denials about meddling in the election were true.
Russia's flagship TV news show took a similar line, saying it was "now clear that there was nothing" to allegations about Manafort being in touch with Russian officials.
Peskov also commented on details of a case against a third former Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty in early October to lying to the FBI.
Papadopoulos told investigators he had tried to set up a meeting between the Trump campaign and the Russian leadership during which he said he met a London-based professor boasting of contacts with Russian officials and an unnamed Russian woman.
The court papers against Papadopoulos mentioned contacts with someone with links to the Russian Foreign Ministry too.
Peskov, when asked what the Kremlin made of someone linked to the Russian Foreign Ministry allegedly trying to set up a Putin-Trump meeting, said the accusation was unsubstantiated.
"It's an absolutely laughable allegation," he said.
