ST.PETERSBURG, June 1. /TASS/. Russia has never been involved in hacker attacks at the state level, President Vladimir Putin stressed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Thursday.

"We are not doing this and are not planning to do this (hacker attacks) at the state level, on the contrary, we try to fight against this inside the country," Putin said at the meeting with heads of international news agencies organized by TASS.

"Hackers can emerge from anywhere - from any country of the world," Putin said. If hackers are patriotically-minded, they start doing their bit and struggle against those who say bad things about Russia, he noted. This is "possible in theory."

"I can imagine another thing, someone is doing something on purpose by carrying out various attacks in order to say that Russia is the source," he said. "Modern technologies allow doing this, this is done quite easily."

Putin also said he is convinced that hackers cannot affect election results in any country. "The most important thing, as I strongly believe, is that no hackers can drastically affect election campaign in another country," he said.