Russian lawmakers appeared to defend Michael Flynn on Tuesday, saying that President Trump's national security adviser was forced to resign by unspecified actors who sought to damage relations between Russia and the United States.
Flynn handed in his resignation late Monday after admitting he provided "incomplete information" about whether he had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with the ambassador to the U.S. prior to Trump taking office.
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But Alexei Pushkov, a Russian parliamentarian, tweeted after the announcement that “it was not Flynn who was targeted but relations with Russia."
And Leonid Slutsky, head of the lower house of the parliament's foreign affairs committee, told Russian media that "It's obvious that Flynn was forced to write the letter of resignation under a certain amount of pressure .... The target was Russia-U.S. relations, undermining confidence in the new U.S. administration."
Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign affairs committee at the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, put the blame more on Trump.
In a post on Facebook, Kosachev said that what led to Flynn's resignation was "not just paranoia but something even worse .... Either Trump hasn’t found the necessary independence and he’s been driven into a corner… or russophobia has permeated the new administration from top to bottom."
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