MOSCOW, September 30. /TASS/. Russia will inevitably find itself under the fire of charges of meddling in the US presidential election due in 2020, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told International Affairs magazine in an interview.
"The generally anti-Russian feverish attitude to what Russia is today and to its policy has become an integral part of many US politicians’ mentality. It is so deeply ingrained in what is happening in Washington today that relapses of such charges are inevitable," Ryabkov said.
He recalled that the Mueller probe had failed to produce the desired effect "certain circles in the United States and some other capitals hoped for."
"We’ve known all along that it will happen precisely this way. It was absolutely impossible to dig up anything to back up these absolutely insane and primitive charges against Russia of meddling in US internal processes," he said. "Nothing like that had ever existed for purely objective reasons and it just could not exist."
"All this is a reflection of the very unsound atmosphere in Washington. For internal political reasons foreign policy ‘hot potatoes’ are tossed from the Republican Party’s side of the table to the Democratic Party’s side," Ryabkov said. "We stay aloof from that and keep watching. Russia could not have played any role in this."
Moscow sees the ongoing events in the United States "as a reflection of the current phase of the internal American political discourse."
"We wish to understand what driving forces are involved and why all this is happening. We do this just out of curiosity, no more than that," Ryabkov said.
Mueller probe
US secret services suspect Russia’s involvement in the US election process in 2016. Former FBI chief Robert Mueller spent nearly two years investigating the alleged intervention attempts. On April 18, 2019 the US Department of Justice published the final report. Mueller recognized that the probe had identified no collusion between the election winner Trump and Russia. At the same time he claimed that Moscow had tried to influence the election campaign. Trump has repeatedly dismissed the suspicion of any unlawful contacts with Russian officials. Moscow, too, more than once denied attempts to influence the outcome of the US presidential election.