The Kremlin said on Wednesday (6) that Russia will not meddle in the November US presidential election, and rejected American conclusions that Moscow orchestrated campaigns to influence the 2016 and 2020 elections.
President Vladimir Putin, Russia's supreme leader since the last day of 1999, has made a series of tongue-in-cheek comments about the US election, saying he considers Joe Biden preferable as the next US president to Donald Trump.
“We never interfere in elections in the United States,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a talk to students about Russian stereotypes, occasionally switching to English.
“And this time we do not intend to interfere. We don’t dictate to anyone how to live – but we don’t want others to dictate to us,” Peskov said.
Peskov said any attempt from abroad to interfere in Russia's presidential elections later this month would be prevented.
Russia, he said, did not care about Western criticism of the vote that Putin, barring an unexpected development, will certainly win.
A 2019 report by U.S. adviser Robert S. Mueller concluded that Russia “comprehensively and systematically interfered in the 2016 presidential election,” while U.S. intelligence believes Russia interfered in the 2020 election.
In 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report saying that Putin had authorized a series of influence operations designed to undermine Biden's candidacy and support Trump while undermining public trust.
The United States last year released a U.S. intelligence assessment that concluded Moscow was using spies, social media and Russian state media outlets to undermine public faith in the integrity of democratic elections around the world.
Never been worse
The war in Ukraine has triggered the deepest crisis in Russia's relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and Putin has warned that the West risks provoking a nuclear war if it sends troops to fight in Ukraine.
Peskov, Putin's spokesman since 2008, said relations with the United States had probably never been worse.
But he said Russia does not view the Americans as an enemy and said the world's two biggest nuclear powers have a special responsibility for ensuring global strategic security.
Relations “have probably never been worse. America is fighting us,” Peskov said.
He said US tanks were being destroyed by Russian forces in Ukraine and said US aircraft would suffer the same fate if sent to Ukraine.
After Putin sent thousands of troops to Ukraine in 2022, the West imposed what it considered to be the toughest sanctions ever imposed on a major economy.
The sanctions “do not harm us,” Peskov said.
On the contrary, he said, they led to an “internal mobilization” of the economy and society. Peskov said Russian economic growth of 3.6% last year showed that sanctions had failed.
Asked what the future held for Russia, Peskov said it would not be easy because the tectonic plates of geopolitics were shifting. But Russia, he said, would remain open to the world.
Source: CNN Brasil
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