Moscow stands ready to respond to any accusations from Washington about alleged Russian interference in the American elections. This was announced on Friday, September 11, by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during a press conference following talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi.
“Many times we offered our American colleagues to sort out the most different options with these absolutely unfounded accusations, we offered to resume the mechanism of consultations on cybersecurity,” he said.
The foreign minister stressed that Russia “is open for an honest conversation, but in order for the conversation to be honest, you need to formulate your claims in such a way that we understand what is at stake.”
On the same day, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, called the statements of the States about Russian interference in the elections as insinuations. According to her, this step “contains nothing but a signal of the intention to follow the generally routine line on the unfounded accusations of the Russians in some undesirable actions.”
The representative of the foreign ministry recalled that Moscow more than once offered the Americans to discuss and resolve all relevant issues “in a calm, depoliticized manner within the framework of a respectful dialogue,” but did not receive an answer.
On the eve of the US Treasury Department announced the imposition of sanctions against three Russians and one citizen of Ukraine in connection with the case of “interference” in the American elections. Citizens of the Russian Federation Anton Andreev, Daria Aslanova and Artem Lifshits, as well as non-factional deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, Andrei Derkach, were blacklisted. All Russians, according to the department, are employees of the Russian Internet Research Agency.
On August 30, US congressmen issued a statement saying that Russia is actively interfering in US elections. It was in response to a decision by the Office of the US Director of National Intelligence not to conduct presidential security briefings to members of US Congressional Intelligence Committees due to leaks of classified information from past meetings.