The alleged Russian hacking into the emails of the Democratic National Committee and its presidential candidate is unlikely to have much effect on US-Russia ties, US President Barack Obama said today.
"In terms of how it affects our relationship with Russia, look I think we've already got a lot of differences with Russia on a whole bunch of issues," Obama told reporters at a White House news conference when asked about hacking into the email systems allegedly by Russian agencies.
"But I think that we have been able to try to stay focused on those areas where we still have a common interest, understanding that we have deep disagreements on issues like Ukraine. Perhaps, potentially, we have an interest in bringing an end to violence in Syria, how do we balance those issues. That is pretty standard state craft at this point with Russia," he said in response to a question.
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"If in fact Russia engaged in this activity, it's just one on a long list of issues that me and (Russian President, Vladimir) Putin talk about, that I have got a real problem with. So, I don't think that it wildly swings what is a tough and difficult relationship that we have with Russia right now," Obama said.
"But it's not going to stop us from still trying to pursue solutions, so that we can, for example implement the Minsk Agreement, and get Russia and those separatists to lay down arms and stop bullying Ukraine. That's not going to stop us from trying to make sure that we can bring a political transition inside of Syria that can end the hardship there," said the US President.
Obama said the FBI is probing the hacking.
"The FBI is still doing an investigation. You're right that there have been some assessments made that this might have been a Russian hack," he said in response to a question.
"What I can tell you without commenting on the specifics is there are a lot of countries out there that are trying to hack into our stuff. Governmental, databases, but also private sector databases and not-for-profit databases," he said.
"This is why we have stood up such an aggressive effort to strengthen our cyber security. And we have provisions in place where, if we see evidence of a malicious attack by a state actor, we can impose, potentially certain proportional penalties. But that requires us to really be able to pin down and know what we are talking about," he added.
"So, I don't want to get ahead of the legal evidence and the facts that we may have in order to make those kinds of decisions. More broadly, we are trying to promote international norms and rules that say, there are certain things that states should not be doing to each other when it comes to cyber attacks. There are certain things that are out of bounds," he said.
"We're still early in the process. I mean, in some ways the explosion of the internet and its importance to our communications systems has outstripped the legal architecture to protect them. And we're playing catch up. But we're going to have to keep on at it," Obama said.
