The truth has turned out to be a lot less exciting than some media outlets have speculated: it turns out that Ambassador Kislyak was simply performing his duties, as Peskov explained during an interview with CNN.
"This is his job. He was talking about bilateral relations; he was talking about what is going on in the United States so that we have a better understanding in Moscow. This is what is being performed by every ambassador of Russia abroad, and by every ambassador of the United States abroad, including the one in Moscow. Because the more an ambassador talks to people in his country of residence, the better he does his job," Peskov said, Sputnik reported.
He also remarked that Kislyak’s contacts weren’t limited to people associated with Donald Trump, and stressed that none of these meetings were related to the US presidential election.
"If you look at some people connected with Hillary Clinton during her campaign, you’d probably see that he had lots of meetings of that kind, but there were no meetings about the election, electoral process; in no way should it be perceived as interference in the electoral process," Peskov added.
Earlier, Dmitry Peskov has also denied allegations that Russians had hacked Democratic Party servers and expressed regret about the impact that the inquiry into Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak’s alleged contacts with members of Donald Trump’s team had on the atmosphere of US-Russian dialogue.