MOSCOW, October 24. /TASS/. The United States needs the alleged hack of the Russian foreign ministry’s website to keep afloat the topic of the so-called Russian-US cyber war, an invention from beginning to end, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday.

On her Facebook account, she drew attention to the fact that Sophia Shin of CNN said the television channel had learnt about the cyberattack on the Russian foreign ministry’s former website directly from the hackers. "That’s how it is! A hacker said, CNN has made it public," she wrote. "It looks like CNN is highlighting Syrian developments in the same way, demonstrating what terrorists are saying."

"As a matter of fact, it was nothing but an imitation of a cyberattack on the Russian foreign ministry’s former website hyped up by CNN which did not bother to check this information by itself or at least ask the Russian foreign ministry," Zakharova noted.

"What is this story for? I think to keep afloat the topic of the so-called Russian-U.S. cyber war, an invention from the very beginning to the very end, the White House is using both in the electoral process and as part of the policy towards plotting and organizing cyberattacks on Russian information resources "at the time of our choosing and under the circumstances that have the greatest impact," as [U.S. Vice President] Joseph Biden put it."

The CNN television network on October 22 said that a US hacker had attacked the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website. Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova later said that the page attacked was an old one and no longer in use. Experts were trying to figure out what had happened in reality, she added.