Kremlin says Russia will not meddle in US presidential poll

Moscow — The Kremlin on Wednesday said that Russia would not meddle in the November 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 leader since the last day of 1999, has dropped a series of ironic remarks about the US election, saying that he found Joe Biden preferable as the next US president to Donald Trump.

“We never interfered in elections in the US,” Kremlin spokesperson 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,” Peskov said.

Any attempt from abroad to interfere in Russia’s presidential election later in March would be prevented, he said. Russia did not care, he said, about Western criticism of the vote which Putin, barring an unexpected development, is certain to win.

A 2019 report by US special counsel Robert S 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 Putin had authorised a range of influence operations aimed at denigrating Biden’s candidacy and supporting Trump while undermining public confidence.

The US in 2023 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.

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 spokesperson since 2008, said relations with the US had probably never been worse. But he said Russia did not see Americans as enemies and that the two biggest nuclear powers had special responsibility to ensure global strategic security.

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 into Ukraine in 2022, the West slapped what it said were the toughest sanctions imposed on a major economy.

The sanctions “do not hurt us”, Peskov said. On the contrary, he said, they had led to an “internal mobilisation” of the economy and society. Peskov said Russian economic growth of 3.6% in 2023 showed the sanctions had failed.

Asked what the future held for Russia, he 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