Russia Says US Hacking Allegations Reminiscent Of A Witch-Hunt

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MOSCOW – Allegations that Russia tried to influence US elections in favour of Donald Trump amount to a witch-hunt, the Kremlin said on Monday, in its first reaction to the release of a US intelligence report on the alleged Russian operation.

The report, a redacted version of which was released publicly last week, alleged that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed a cyber campaign aimed at helping Trump beat his rival Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House.

Read: US intel report: Trump team continues to blame Democrats for email hacking

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said no new evidence had been produced to show that Russian officials were involved.

“We are observing a serious fatigue with these accusations,” Peskov said. “It truly is reminiscent of a witch-hunt.”

His words echoed a phrase used by Trump himself, who was quoted as saying in an interview with the New York Times newspaper on Friday that the storm over Russian hacking was a “political witch hunt.”

Peskov, commenting on the US intelligence report, said: “You know, that version of the report that was made public added no substance whatsoever that we can comment on.”

“Groundless accusations which are not supported by anything are being rehearsed in an amateurish, unprofessional way. We don’t know what information they are actually relying on.”

Read: How US intel report on elections will affect Trump, Putin and the world

Asked if Putin himself had read a translation of the report, Peskov said there was nothing in the document “that’s worth reading in detail.”

But Peskov said the Kremlin’s position, as in the past, was that it categorically ruled out that any Russian official could have been involved in hacking related to the 2016 US presidential election.

Both Trump and Putin have said they want to restore US-Russian relations, and the Kremlin spokesman indicated that Moscow was looking beyond the hacking row and ahead to the new administration.

Peskov said there had been witch-hunts in the past in US history, but those periods came to an end when what he described as more sober leaders took charge.

Peskov said once Trump was inaugurated on January 20, work will begin on finding a date for a first meeting between the Russian and US leaders.

Also read: US intel report ties Putin to ‘hidden campaign’ in favour of Trump

“If some kind of contacts will be planned, then they will be planned extremely painstakingly, carefully, especially since we are talking about contacts following a very tense period in our relations,” he said, referring to disputes between the Kremlin and the Obama administration.