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Russian ambassador blasts US claims that Russia is ‘haven’ for hackers

Russia has always underlined that cybercrime can be defeated only through mutual efforts, Anatoly Antonov said

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov Alexander Shcherbak/TASS

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov

© Alexander Shcherbak/TASS

WASHINGTON, February 10. /TASS/. The US government’s claims that Russia is a haven for cyber criminals are false and irresponsible, and constitute an element of the hybrid warfare against Russia, Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov said in a statement on Friday.

Commenting on US sanctions targeting the Trickbot cybercrime gang, which the US claims is based in Russia, the diplomat said: "It is yet another example of baseless accusations against our country."

"The US Treasury seems to have nothing else to do than to impose sanctions on Russian citizens. And all this is done in a very clumsy way - no arguments and no evidence. It is an apparent attempt to create appearance of the fight against cybercrime in the eyes of American taxpayers," he continued.

"Russia has always underlined that cybercrime can be defeated only through mutual efforts. The Russian side demonstrated its readiness to cooperate with the United States on cybersecurity matters when at the US request the intelligence agencies of our countries performed an operation to neutralize members of a large hacker group in January 2022. However, Washington ‘froze’ the Kremlin-White House dialogue on these issues. We definitely will not impose ourselves," the ambassador went on.

"As for the US Treasury’s allegations that Russia is a ‘haven’ for cybercriminals, they are false and irresponsible. All that is an integral element of the hybrid war waged against us," Antonov added. "In 2022, our country was a target of an unprecedentedly high number of external cyberattacks. About 50 thousand hacker attacks were repelled. The majority of them originated from the territory of the United States. A fair question is: maybe the 'haven' for cybercrime is the United States then?".

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Foreign policy United States Anatoly Antonov

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