Russia annoyed by bizarre Trump ad featuring Putin and barking Hillary Clinton

The Kremlin on Thursday hit out at a pre-election video promoting U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, complaining it demonized Russia's image.

"I saw this clip. I do not know for sure if (President) Vladimir Putin saw it. (But) our attitude is negative," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a teleconference with reporters.

"It's an open secret for us that demonizing Russia and whatever is linked to Russia is unfortunately a mandatory hallmark of America's election campaign. We always sincerely regret this and wish the (U.S.) electoral process was conducted without such references to our country."

The video Peskov was referring to attempts to cast doubt over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's ability to deal with Putin and U.S. opponents in general, showing the Russian leader easily throwing an opponent in a judo bout.

It then cuts to a clip of Clinton in which sounds resembling a dog barking have been overlaid before cutting to footage of Putin laughing.

Is this what we want for a President?

A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Mar 16, 2016 at 9:15am PDT

(Reporting by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Andrew Osborn)