Sergey Kislyak, the former Russian ambassador to the United States, would not issue a confirmation or denial about discussions with Jared Kushner on creating a secret backchannel with Russia.
"I've said many times we do not discuss the substance of our discussions with our American interlocutors out of respect to our partners," Kislyak said in an interview with CNN.
"I'm not sure that I heard anything that would be secret," Kislyak responded, when a CNN interviewer asked if he was surprised that President Donald Trump revealed secrets during their meeting in May, according to a May CBS report.
Kislyak also criticized CNN for the suggestion that he is a Russian spy.
"You should be ashamed because CNN is the company that keeps pointing to this allegation. It's nonsense," Kislyak said.
The former ambassador said he did not foresee positive relations between the U.S. and Russia.
"I'm afraid it's going to be difficult. And it's not because of us. It's because (of) the U.S. political dynamics. The anti-Russian law simply isn't going to help Russian-American discussions," he said in the CNN interview.
New U.S. sanctions against Russia will diminish the prospects of the U.S. and Russia having "normalcy" in their relationship, Kislyak added.
When Kislyak met with Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, in December, Trump's transition team and Russian officials discussed setting up back-channel communications between them, in a development first reported by The Washington Post and confirmed by CBS News in May.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Anatoly Antonov as Russia's new U.S. ambassador.