President Donald Trump said President Vladimir Putin feels insulted by allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

The two leaders briefly met at the APEC summit in Vietnam.

“He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election,” Donald Trump said.

President Trump, who defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, said the allegations were a “Democratic hit job”.

The US intelligence community concluded earlier that Russia had indeed tried to sway the poll in favor of Donald Trump.

The DoJ has appointed special investigator Robert Mueller to examine any possible collusion involving Donald Trump’s team, and legal action has already been taken against several former aides.

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President Trump has refused to acknowledge a reported assessment by the CIA and other intelligence agencies that Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

The contents of the emails, passed to WikiLeaks and posted online, were embarrassing to the Democrats and shook up the presidential campaign, which ended in defeat for Hillary Clinton.

In addition to Robert Mueller’s inquiry, congressional committees have been set up to carry out their own investigations.

Relations between the US and Russia have been strained for years, with the Kremlin long accusing Washington of seeking to sway elections in Russia and other ex-Soviet states including Ukraine and Georgia.

While Russian hackers are widely suspected of involvement, there has been no conclusive link to the Kremlin.

Denying that Russia had tried to interfere last year by fostering contacts with Donald Trump’s campaign, Vladimir Putin told reporters in Vietnam: “Everything about the so-called Russian dossier in the US is a manifestation of a continuing domestic political struggle.”

President Trump said he believed President Putin had been “very insulted by” the allegations and that was “not a good thing” for America.

“He [Vladimir Putin] said he didn’t meddle,” the president added.

“I asked him again.”

Asked if he believed President Putin, Donald Trump replied: “He is very, very strong in the fact that he didn’t do it. You have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he has nothing to do with that. Now, you are not going to get into an argument, you are going to start talking about Syria and the Ukraine.”