US presidential campaign has become ‘global shame’ – Russian FM spokeswoman

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Commenting on the heated 2016 presidential race in the US, Zakharova lamented that by accusing Moscow of mounting cyber-attacks with an alleged aim of meddling in American politics, Washington has turned Russia into a “real, serious factor of pre-election rhetoric.” 

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“They are constantly saying that Russia is carrying out cyber-attacks on certain US facilities,” she said. Zakharova stressed that the US side provided no proof or any other data on the alleged hackers’ links to Moscow, which she says makes the allegations appear to be a “smokescreen” to cover up serious domestic issues.

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According to the spokeswoman, this “public bickering on Russia” as well as “locker-room jokes” are “unworthy of a great power, [and] great people” of America.

“I simply believe that this campaign is not worthy of their people. As a person who was engaged in information technologies when studying at the university, I believe that this is a catastrophic campaign. May the colleagues of all kinds and countries forgive me, but I believe that this is simply some sort of a global shame,” Zakharova said at a meeting with students at the Moscow Aviation Institute, Life.ru reported.

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Earlier in October, the US government claimed it was “confident” that Russia was behind the hacking attacks on US officials and organizations, alleging that revelations by WikiLeaks, DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0. were directly authorized by the Russian government with the intention to “interfere with the US election process.”

“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” read the report, published by the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The accusations were based on the fact that attacks “in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company.”

Moscow, for its part, completely dismissed the allegations, denying any involvement in the attacks. Commenting on the report, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov labeled the accusations “yet another fit of nonsense,” adding that while many cyber-attacks Russia faces on a daily basis can be traced back to US services, Russia refrains from calling US government responsible for cybercrimes.