Russia denies involvement in hacker attacks against US

Russia on Monday refuted accusations of Moscow's involvement in hacker attacks during the 2016 US presidential election, saying that it was a "tiresome witch-hunt".

"We continue to categorically rule out any involvement of Moscow and... Russian officials and agencies in any hacker attacks," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Earlier this month, the US intelligence community published the declassified part of a report "assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections," claiming that "Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election."

The report said Moscow's action aimed to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process", via Russian government agencies, state-funded media, paid social media users as well as hackers, in order to secure Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election.

Peskov said that the allegations in the US intelligence community publication had no proof and had been prepared at an "amateur, emotional level", which is hardly applicable to the highly professional work of high-quality security services.

On Sunday, the Trump team said Trump has accepted the US intelligence community's findings that Russia was behind the cyber attacks targeting the presidential election, accusations that Trump has earlier repeatedly rebuffed.

But Trump has said that the alleged hacking activities had no impact on the election results and he did not directly acknowledge Moscow's responsibility.

--IANS

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