The Kremlin on Wednesday said that Russia will not meddle in November’s US presidential election, and dismissed American findings that Moscow orchestrated campaigns to sway both the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections.
President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s paramount leader since the last day of 1999, has dropped a series of ironic remarks about the US election, saying that he finds US President Joe Biden preferable as the next US president to Donald Trump.
“We never interfered in elections in the United States,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a lecture to students on stereotypes about Russia, occasionally slipping into English.
“And this time, we do not intend to interfere … We do not dictate to anyone how to live — but we don’t want others to dictate to us,” Mr Peskov said.
Mr Peskov said any attempt from abroad to interfere in Russia’s presidential election later in March would be prevented. Russia, he said, did not care about Western criticism of the vote which Mr Putin, barring an unexpected development, is certain to win.
A 2019 report by US Special Counsel Robert Mueller found that Russia had “interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion”, while US intelligence believes Russia interfered in the 2020 election.
In 2021, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report saying that Mr Putin had authorised a range of influence operations aimed at denigrating Mr Biden’s candidacy and supporting Mr Trump while undermining public confidence.
The US also last year released an intelligence assessment that found Moscow was using spies, social media and Russian state-run media to erode public faith in the integrity of democratic elections worldwide.
Relations with US have ‘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 Mr Putin has warned that the West risks provoking a nuclear war if it sends troops to fight in Ukraine.
Mr Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman since 2008, said that relations with the United States had probably never been worse.
But he said Russia did not see Americans as enemies, and said that the world’s two biggest nuclear powers had special responsibility to ensure global strategic security.
Relations “have probably never been worse. America is fighting against us,” Mr 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 Mr Putin sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022, the West slapped what it said were the toughest sanctions ever imposed on a major economy on Russia.
The sanctions “do not hurt us”, Mr Peskov said.
On the contrary, he said, they had led to an “internal mobilisation” of the economy and society. Mr Peskov said Russian economic growth of 3.6 per cent last year showed the sanctions had failed.
Asked what the future held for Russia, Mr 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.
Reuters