The Kremlin has accused the United States of meddling in Russia’s upcoming presidential election, and even accused Uncle Sam of planning a cyberattack on the country’s online voting system.
“According to information received by the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, the administration of J. Biden is setting a task for American NGOs to achieve a decrease in turnout,” Reuters cited the Russian intel service – also known as SVR – as saying.
The snoops did not provide any proof to support these claims. They also reportedly said any foreign interference would be considered an act of aggression — while also giving President Vladimir Putin an easy scapegoat if he doesn’t garner 100 percent of the popular vote, which begins March 15.
“With the participation of leading American IT specialists, it is planned to carry out cyber attacks on the remote electronic voting system, which will make it impossible to count the votes of a significant proportion of Russian voters,” the statement continued.
We would be remiss not to mention the irony in this statement — and Russian elections, in general.
Putin, who controls the SVR and the election process, will undoubtedly win the vote. The election itself is little more than a farce. The world has also seen what happens to Putin’s political opponents.
The Russian foreign intelligence service’s claims also come about a week after the Kremlin pinky-swore it wouldn’t meddle in the US presidential election in November, and dismissed American claims that it did try to sway the outcome in 2016 and 2020.
“We never interfered in elections in the United States,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “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,” Peskov added.
The US has repeatedly accused Russia of trying to undermine and muck around with both, even indicting Russian troll farm the Internet Research Agency for alleged 2016 election interference [PDF].
Plus, the US Office of National Intelligence accused Putin of personally authorizing“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 socio-political divisions in the US” in 2020.
Despite these and more recent attempts to sway or put off voters, the Kremlin hasn’t had much luck influencing Americans to elect any Putin-backed candidates. And, at least thus far in the 2024 election season, that still holds true.
“We do not have any specific or credible threat to today’s election operations,” a senior CISA official said on Super Tuesday, March 5, as 15 US states and one territory voted in their respective primary elections.
Later in the day, as the East Coast polling places closed up shop, senior official confirmed: “We did not observe any issues out of the ordinary today.” ®