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Putin denies Russian cyber attacks amid US presidential election

The US media have been making allegations that Wikileaks received this information from alleged Russian-backed hackers, however, no evidence to prove the allegations has been put forward so far

© Mikhail Metzel/TASS

NEW YORK, June 15. /TASS/. Russia did not use hacker attacks to influence the results of the US presidential election campaign in 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with US filmmaker Oliver Stone.

On Thursday, Salon.com published extracts from the interview with Putin's answers translated into English.

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Russia suggests introducing global cyber security rules

"Some hackers indeed revealed problems that existed within the Democratic Party, but I don’t think it has influenced in any serious manner either the electoral campaign or its outcome," Putin insisted.

"Yes, these unrecognized hackers, they have brought to light the problems that existed, but they didn’t tell any lies, they were not trying to deceive or fool anyone. And the fact that the Chairwoman of the Executive Committee of the Democratic Party has resigned testifies to the fact that she has admitted it’s true? So hackers are not the ones to blame. These are internal problems of the United States. These people who tried to manipulate public opinion shouldn’t have tried to create an image of Russia as an enemy. They should have instead apologized to the electorate, but they didn’t do that," the Russian president said.

The crisis situation in the ranks of the leadership of the Democratic Party emerged in July 2016, when more than 19,000 e-mail messages and more than 8,000 other documents were posted on the WikiLeaks website, including correspondence of the key figures of the Democratic National Committee.

Read also

Trump points to irregularities within Democratic party revealed by cyberattacks

As a result of the scandal, the committee’s chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to step down because the documents indicated that the members of the committee had tried to support Clinton during the primaries and also to discredit Sen. Bernie Sanders, her competitor in the struggle for the post of the party's official presidential candidate.

The US media as well as some officials have been making allegations that Wikileaks received this information from some Russian-backed hackers, however, no evidence to prove the allegations has been put forward so far.

Stone conducted a dozen interviews with Putin between 2015 and February 2017 for his four-part documentary. The Putin Interviews premiered on Showtime TV channel in the United States on June 12 and will continue through June 15.

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Vladimir Putin Cyber security

Military operation in Ukraine

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