Russia denies report on Putin's role in 2020 US polls, slams 'groundless accusations'

Russia has slammed the latest US intelligence report accusing the Kremlin of interfering in the 2020 presidential elections as “groundless accusations”. Russian Embassy in the United States issued a statement on Wednesday, saying the US intelligence report did not provide any specific evidence to back its claims. Russia accused Washington of continuing to practice “megaphone diplomacy” with the key objective of propagating a negative image of Moscow. 

“The document prepared by the US intelligence community is another set of groundless accusations against our country of interfering in American internal political processes. The conclusions of the report on Russia conducting influence operations in America are confirmed solely by the confidence of the intelligence services of their self-righteousness. No facts or specific evidence of such claims were provided,” Russian Embassy said in a statement. 

The declassified report states that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally authorised an influence campaign to disparage President Joe Biden’s candidacy. The report said that Russia used proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives, including misleading and unsubstantiated allegations against Joe Biden. 

Report clears China

However, the report also stated that, unlike the 2016 presidential elections, the US officials were not able to find persistent Russian cyber efforts to gain access to election infrastructure. "We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organisations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US," the report said. 

The report further accused Iran of conducting an influence campaign against former US President Donald Trump, who had withdrawn Washington from the 2015 nuclear deal and had reimposed sanctions on Tehran. Contrary to earlier reports, the findings concluded that China did not run any influence campaign to change the outcome of the US election.