Moscow slams US Senate report on Russian president as ‘unfounded’

Russia has lambasted as “unfounded” a report released by the US Senate that accuses Moscow of carrying out disinformation campaigns to undermine democracies, including the Kremlin’s alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election.

“We can only express our dismay with this continuing campaign and once again remind that these fears, these accusations against our country about meddling, still have no basis and are absolutely unfounded,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press conference in the Russian capital Moscow on Thursday.

Peskov’s condemnation came a day after US top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Ben Cardin, issued a lengthy report in more than 200 pages, titled “Vladimir Putin's asymmetric assault on democracy.”

The report, which spans Putin’s 18 years in power, details the extent to which Moscow has allegedly tried to shape elections in Russia and across Europe by conducting “malign influence operations.”

Peskov said the allegations reflected an “obsessive idea” in Washington that could harm “not just US-Russian bilateral relations but the US itself.”

Putin has already said such allegations are nothing more than mere “madness” and "espionage mania," adding that they are “dreamed up” by US President Donald Trump's “delirious” opponents in an effort to discredit the American leader.

Trump, for his part, has long denied any collusion between his campaign and Russian operatives during the US presidential campaigns of 2016, which resulted in his rival Hillary Clinton’s loss.

American intelligence agencies claimed in January last year that Russia had interfered in the presidential election to try to help then Republican candidate Trump defeat Democratic nominee Clinton.

The intelligence agencies said Moscow’s interference included a campaign of hacking and releasing embarrassing emails, and disseminating propaganda via social media to discredit her campaign.

US special counsel Robert Mueller, who was appointed by the US Justice Department to lead the Russia probe, is investigating whether Trump election officials cooperated with those Russian efforts.

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