Claims by U.S. intelligence that Russia is plotting to meddle in this year’s midterm Congressional elections are preposterous and prove that America is obsessed with such theories, Russia’s top government spokesman said Wednesday.
"All this looks like an obsession … Russia has not intervened in any country’s internal affairs, it is not intervening in them at the moment and it has no plans to do so in the future," Dmitry Sergeyevich Peskov, the press secretary to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told news agency Tass.
"We are very critical of others’ attempts to meddle in our internal affairs and we never do this in relation to others. We feel great regret our words fall on deaf ears in the United States."
Russia’s denials come one day after CIA Director Mike Pompeo, National Intelligence Director Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers said the U.S. has seen Russian activity aimed at meddling in the 2018 midterms.
In addition, a new intelligence report on global threats concludes Russian interference in the upcoming elections is part of its pursuit of bolder cyber operations and false information campaigns against America and its allies.
The nation’s top intelligence agencies already have concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.