Trump remarks draw fire

President Donald Trump is drawing fire from Republicans and Democrats alike after playing down political assassinations in Russia and Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Trump -- now two weeks into his four-year term -- showed no signs of yielding to demands from within his own Republican Party to distance himself from President Vladimir Putin's regime, instead plunging himself into a fresh political firestorm.

"I do respect him. Well, I respect a lot of people, but that doesn't mean I'm going to get along with them," Trump said in an excerpt of an interview with Fox News's Bill O'Reilly that aired before the Super Bowl on Sunday.

When pressed in relation to Putin's alleged links to the extrajudicial killing of journalists and dissidents, Trump said, "we've got a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?"

"Take a look at what we've done too. We've made a lot of mistakes." Trump's fellow Republicans, including Senate leader Mitch McConnell, were quick to criticize the president's remarks.

"I don't think there is any equivalency with the way the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does," McConnell said.

"He is a former KGB agent, a thug, not elected in a way that most people consider a credible election," he told CNN.

That criticism was echoed by Michael McFaul, a former ambassador to Russia and advisor to president Barack Obama, who described Trump's comments as "disgusting."

"This moral equivalency that Trumps continues to draw between the USA and Russia is disgusting (and inaccurate)," he said on Twitter.

Mainstream Republicans have repeatedly called on Trump to distance himself from Putin, with little impact.

Meanwhile, Kremlin yesterday urged US network Fox News to apologise after its presenter called Russian President Vladimir Putin "a killer" while interviewing Trump.

"We consider such words from a Fox News correspondent unacceptable and offensive," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists in a conference call.

"To be honest we would prefer to receive an apology addressed to the president from such a respected television company," the Kremlin spokesman added.