Mending Russia-US ties not to be 'quick and easy': Kremlin

Mending soured relations between Russia and the US under the new US administration of Donald Trump will not be a "quick and easy" process, authorities said on Wednesday.

According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, relations have nearly hit "rock bottom" during the Obama Administration, Xinhua news agency reported.

Earlier this month, in their first telephone conversation after Trump's victory in the election, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the US President-elect agreed to make joint efforts to normalise their current battered ties.

"The President always said he expected a reciprocity from Washington," the CNN quoted Peskov as saying.

"Now we know that our bilateral relations are at the bottom so it's hard to make them worse, but we certainly hope for resuming a dialogue and we'll start a difficult and slow process of bringing the relations back to a constructive course."

Republican Trump, who won the 2016 US presidential election against his democratic rival Hillary Clinton, campaigned on a platform of detente with Russia and has expressed reservations about NATO.

--IANS

sm/dg