MOSCOW, August 28. /TASS/. Countries that insist that Russia has been interfering in the domestic affairs of sovereign states are the ones guilty of using this method themselves, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with the Slovak newspaper Pravda.
"Right off the bat, I want to say, so that there aren’t any doubts, that we’ve never interfered in other countries’ domestic affairs. That’s not the way we do things," he said. "By the way, in this regard we differ fundamentally from those countries for whom this practice has pretty much become a favorite tool for promoting their own geopolitical interests."
"It’s enough to recall the outside intervention in the Arab Spring, or inciting the anti-constitutional coup in Ukraine," the top diplomat resumed. "By the way, we’ve been registering ongoing attempts to influence domestic political processes in Russia for many years," he added. "So, those who accuse us of these things are guilty of doing that themselves, so to say."
The assertions about Russia’s intervention in the American election that have been carrying on for two years already, have domestic roots, Lavrov said. "The [US] Democratic administration lost the election and, instead of admitting to it and exiting quietly, it conjured up some imagined Russian hackers as the culprits for their failure and started indoctrinating the public with a non-existent collusion ‘plot’ with Russia, this time against the winner from the Republican party," the Russian foreign minister stated. "Honestly speaking, it is embarrassing how easily this groundless issue turned into the focus of America’s discourse on domestic current affairs."
Lavrov reiterated that Russia has been saying for several years that the US should furnish proof of Russian hackers meddling in the US presidential election. "However, there is nothing," he stressed. "We’ve been suggesting for more than a year that the Americans should create a bilateral working group on cyber security to discuss and remove mutual concerns linked, in particular, to the influence on electoral processes in both countries. However, Washington is skirting this professional exchange of communication, so maybe they’re not ready for a substantial conversation.".