'This is a full scale witch-hunt'- Russia hits back at U.S over election hacking allegations

Tuesday, 10 January 2017

Russia has hit back at the United States saying allegations by U.S Intelligence officials (Read) that it influenced the U.S Presidential elections to favor Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton are 'unfounded' and a 'full scale witch hunt' by the president Obama led U.S government.

The report, published by the Office of the Director of U.S Intelligence last week, accused Putin of directly influencing the elections by hacking Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta and leaking information obtained to Wikileaks.

But Russia has now responded to the allegations through Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

'The charges against Russia "were not backed by anything" and were "made on a very amateur, emotional level." Peskov told reporters during a conference call on Monday.

"What we see is ... that all of this looks like is a full-scale witch hunt," he said.

"We understand that our US colleagues, during various stages of their history, have gone through such witch hunts, we remember these stages of history, we know that they are replaced with more sober experts, more sober approaches that are after all aimed at a dialogue, not at emotional fits," 

"We still don't know what data have been used by those who come up with these unfounded accusations," 

"We still categorically reject any involvement of Moscow, any involvement of official and unofficial persons in the Russian Federation in the hacker attacks," he said.

Peskov also revealed that a meeting between Trump and Putin "is going to take place".

"If some contacts are planned, they will be planned very carefully," he said. "We're talking about contacts after a very tense phase in the evolution of our relations, in the degradation of our relations.

"That's why, of course, any contacts on the highest level will be very carefully arranged."