Russia, China reject US ‘election interference’ claim

“As for these accusations, they are absurd. We resolutely refute them,” the spokesman said, commenting on a US National Intelligence report alleging that Russia, Iran and China are trying to meddle in the American electoral process.

Peskov pointed out that the intelligence community was simply “following modern trends in domestic politics”.

“They too have to look for enemies. And what better enemy for the Americans than the Russians,” the spokesman emphasized.

“Of course, there will be a lot of these kinds of statements as the US election approaches, because Russia and the head of state [Vladimir Putin] personally are, in fact, significantly exploited by both the Republicans and the Democrats in their political struggle, especially in the election campaign. We’re used to it. Unfortunately, this is just the way things are with the United States,” he emphasized.

At the same time, Peskov noted that “every time the US exploits both Russia and Putin in its internal political struggle it causes new irreversible damage to bilateral Russian-American relations”.

“But this happens every political cycle. And in recent political cycles it has only gotten worse,” the spokesman continued, adding, “I would like to remind you that after the last presidential election tens of millions of taxpayer dollars were wasted on the creation and work of special commissions, groups under the US law enforcement agencies, special services and so on, which worked tirelessly for a year, with no regard for taxpayer money, to come to the conclusion that there was no influence on the election. Just a funny fact that I wanted to remind you of.”

It comes in response to a late July Election Security Update by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) in which Russia, China and Iran were accused of supposedly using their influence to impact US politics and threaten the upcoming US presidential election, scheduled for November.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian responded to the accusations by stating that “China has never interfered in and will not interfere in the US election”.

“We oppose the US spreading false information to smear China and oppose the US election using China as an excuse,” Lin stressed.