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The Kremlin’s foreign intelligence agency has told the US not to interfere with its March presidential elections.
Russian state media has published a stark warning from Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR.
The tl;dr version?
Stay out of our elections, or else.
The warning comes in the lead-up to Russia’s presidential election, which is due to be held from 15 to 17 March. According to state media, the SVR has information about US plans to meddle in the elections, which are expected to return Vladimir Putin for his fifth term in the role.
“According to information received by the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, the administration of J. Biden is setting a task for American NGOs to achieve a decrease in turnout,” the SVR said, as reported by Reuters.
“With the participation of leading American IT specialists, it is planned to carry out cyber attacks on the remote electronic voting system, which will make it impossible to count the votes of a significant proportion of Russian voters.”
Putin is expected to win in a landslide against a largely hamstrung opposition movement still reeling from the death of prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Given the fairness of Russian elections, the warning is deeply ironic at best.
The SVR also claimed recently to have no interest in interfering in the US’ own elections in November 2024. The agency has also denied its role in attempting to interfere in the outcome of the 2016 and 2020 elections, despite allegations to the contrary.
“We never interfered in elections in the United States,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to a group of students earlier this month.
“And this time, we do not intend to interfere,” Peskov said. We do not dictate to anyone how to live – but we don’t want others to dictate to us.”
Russia has been attempting to dictate how the people of Ukraine should live since it annexed Crimea in 2014 and then launched a full-scale invasion in 2022.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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