Russian intel agency says US planning cyber attacks to influence country’s presidential elections
Russian President Vladimir Putin
Russian foreign intelligence agency accused the United States of attempting to meddle in the country's upcoming presidential election later this week in which President Vladimir Putin is set to extend his hold over Moscow's corridors of power.
Russia's SVR Foreign Intelligence Serviceclaimed that the Biden administration had plans to launch cyber attacks on the online voting system, to interfere with the purported integrity of the election process.SVR,the main successor to the KGB's First Directorate foreign spying service, stands for Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki. It translates to "Foreign Intelligence Service" in Russian.
Putin himself has warned the West against meddling in Russia's electoral affairs, adding that such actions would be considered acts of aggression.
Russia is scheduled to hold presidential elections between March 15 and 17.
What did Russia's SVR say?
The SVR said: "According to information received by the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, the administration of Joe Biden is setting a task for American NGOs to achieve a decrease in turnout. 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."
Washington is yet to respond to these claims.
West Vs Putin and Russia's presidential elections
The West has portrayed Putin as a leader with a dictatorial bend, a 'war criminal', and an aggressor who is spearheading Russia's expansionist belligerence in the context of the war in Ukraine.
Putin, on the other hand, frames the Ukraine war as an existential battle between a "sacred" Russian civilisation and a declining West that has sought to humiliate Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Kremlin last week said that Moscow would not interfere in the upcoming US presidential election in which Joe Biden is set to clash with former US president and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. Moscow has consistentlydismissed previous American assertions that it orchestrated campaigns to influence both the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections.
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Meanwhile, Putin who has led Russia for almost all of the twenty-first century, has expressed a preference for Joe Biden over Donald Trump as the next US president.
(With inputs from agencies)