Kremlin Denies Report on Meddling

MOSCOW—The Kremlin on Thursday dismissed a new report by Senate Democrats describing Russian interference in the U.S. and throughout Europe as unfounded and President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of “aggressive” overreaction. Some European politicians said they are mindful of Moscow’s meddling.

The 200-page report commissioned by Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is the first from Congress to detail alleged Russian efforts to undermine democracies since the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Commenting on the report, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that “the accusations of alleged meddling leveled against our country are absolutely unfounded.”

Speaking in a conference call Thursday with reporters, Peskov said that “such paranoid concerns not only hurt bilateral relations, but the U.S. itself.”

“When it grows into an obsession, it doesn’t create comfortable conditions for normal social development and life,” he said.

Putin later told Russian journalists: “No one likes interference in their internal political issues and affairs; our American friends especially do not like it. We see their reaction to unreliable information about our intervention, how sharp it is, I would even say how aggressive it is.”

The comments reported by Russian news agencies did not specifically mention the Cardin report.

No Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee signed on to Cardin’s inquiry, which directly blamed Putin for a “relentless assault to undermine democracy and the rule of law in Europe and the United States.”

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in the U.S. election to help Donald Trump, a Republican, defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Russia has repeatedly denied meddling in the U.S. vote, and it also has rejected allegations of interfering with European elections.

The report didn’t raise eyebrows in European capitals, where purported cases of Russian meddling are already widely known or reported.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Wednesday that “attempts at disinformation in the digital domain,” some of which “originate from Russian sources” have worried Berlin.

“It’s a factor that has changed digital communications in recent years, not just in Germany but in many European countries and certainly also in the United States,” he told reporters in Berlin. “We are certainly looking at this a lot more closely than we were two or three years ago, because the phenomenon has increased. And we are talking about this and cooperating with European partners.”

The French government’s digital affairs chief, Mounir Mahjoubi, vaunted a new plan by President Emmanuel Macron to outlaw fake news during election campaigns in response to attempts at political manipulation.

Asked whether the U.S. is doing enough to combat it, Mahjoubi said in an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday that “the U.S. and Facebook have already joined the worldwide community talking about this subject, and what happened during the American election and the French election and other European elections.”

“This is a very important debate … in the U.S., in France and Europe,” he said.

Mahjoubi didn’t mention specific measures against Russia, but Macron earlier has accused Russian state-funded RT television and Sputnik news agency of propagating lies about him during last year’s presidential campaign. Sputnik notably reported rumors that Macron was having a gay affair, which Macron denied.

France was praised in Cardin’s report for concerted government efforts to prevent hacking and other outside intervention in the 2017 French presidential campaign.

Commenting on the report from Denmark, Jens Worning Soerensen, Denmark’s former consul general in St. Petersburg and director of the Policy Group think tank, said that “we all know what is happening, but no one knows right now how it is orchestrated and how coordinated it is.”

Soerensen warned that the insufficient U.S. support for European efforts to counter the Russian meddling will mean “insecurity will spread,” adding there is a fear that “that there will be attempts to influence elections.”

“It is hard to assess what the consequences will be, but we have seen how Russia has financed pro-Moscow groups, for instance right-wing groups,” he said.

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Angela Charlton reported from Paris. Jim Heintz in Moscow, Frank Jordans in Berlin, and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.