At the news conference, Trump was invited by reporters to offer any criticism of Russia, but he repeatedly declined. Asked if Russia was at all to blame for the poor ties, he said: “I hold both countries responsible. I think the U.S. has been foolish. We’ve all been foolish,” he said, before veering into a discussion about his election victory.

“I beat Hillary Clinton easily and frankly we beat her ... we won that race and it’s a shame that there can be even a little bit of a cloud over it,” he said.

Trump’s warm words for Russia were a marked contrast from the past week, when he repeatedly rebuked long-standing U.S. allies at a NATO summit and during a visit to Britain.

Asked if Putin was an adversary, he said: “Actually I called him a competitor, and a good competitor he is, and I think the word competitor is a compliment.”

Trump also refrained from publicly criticizing Russia’s 2014 seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea region, another geopolitical win for Putin against Western efforts to isolate him.

Putin spoke of the importance of the two countries working together and praised Trump, at one point interrupting the news conference to give the U.S. president a soccer ball.

Asked whether he had wanted Trump to win the 2016 election and had instructed officials to help him, Putin said: “Yes I did,” although he denied any interference, saying the allegations were “complete nonsense.”

Putin suggested U.S. investigators might travel to Russia to participate in questioning Russians accused by Washington of U.S. election meddling as long as Russian investigators were allowed to do the same with U.S. spies operating in Russia, an idea Trump’s critics dismissed as ludicrous.

The summit capped a trip abroad during which Trump accused NATO allies of failing to spend enough on their militaries and embarrassed British Prime Minister Theresa May by saying she refused to take his advice about how to negotiate Britain’s exit from the EU. He referred to the European Union as a “foe” in trade and repeatedly criticized it.

In some of the strongest words yet reflecting the unease of Washington’s traditional allies, Germany’s foreign minister said on Monday that Europe could no longer rely on the United States.

“To maintain our partnership with the USA we must readjust it,” Heiko Maas told the Funke newspaper group. “The first clear consequence can only be that we need to align ourselves even more closely in Europe.”

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