Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that the outgoing administration of President Barack Obama is seeking to undermine the incoming one of President-elect Donald Trump.

Speaking at a press conference, Putin accused the Obama administration of attempting to “undermine the legitimacy of the president-elect,” according to the Associated Press. The Russian president called Trump’s victory in last year’s presidential election “convincing.”

Putin also said those responsible for leaking a dossier of unverified intelligence connecting Trump to the Russian government are “worse than prostitutes." Borrowing a descriptor used with increasing frequency by Trump, Putin decried reports that the Kremlin possesses salacious and compromising information about the president-elect as “fake news” and “phony stuff.”

Throughout his presidential campaign and into his transition, Trump has taken a decidedly soft stance towards Russia, puzzling even some members of his own party. He lagged months behind the intelligence community in labeling Russia as the culprit behind a wave of election-year cyberattacks and has said he would consider officially recognizing the Russian annexation of Crimea away from Ukraine.

Referencing the Ukrainian protests that ousted a Russian-backed president in Kiev, Putin said that some in the U.S. are looking to "stage a Maidan in Washington.”