GOP senator: Obama’s Russia trip like ‘pile of manure’

President Obama’s trip to Russia has produced little more than a “pile of manure,” the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Wednesday.

Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) said that Obama had failed to raise a number of important issues with Russian leaders during meetings there in the first half of this week.

“President Obama, as far as I know, hasn’t raised any of those questions — like including cybersecurity, including sanctions on North Korea and Iran,” Bond said during a conference with Missouri reporters. “I’m still digging through the manure pile to see if there’s a pony in it, but I haven’t seen any coming out of the meetings with [Prime Minister] Vladimir Putin and [President Dimitry] Medvedev yet.”

Bond also saved some tough words for the Russian government itself, calling it “brutal” and a “despotic kleptocracy.” (Kleptocracies are defined by a government that enriches its leaders or ruling class at the expense of the general populous.)

“Sadly, Russia’s continued to devolve from what was formerly an evolving, democratic society after the Cold War back into a despotic kleptocracy,” Bond said, “A brutal kleptocracy where opponents and journalists are murdered if they speak out against it.”

The Missouri lawmaker, who’s retiring at the end of this term in Congress, said that Russia needed to diversify and open up its economy, and called on the government to provide more assistance to bolster both the U.S. and Russian governments’ cybersecurity efforts.