Dear Editor,
In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria broadcast on Sunday, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov addressed a new round of a Western media campaign against Russia including speculation on supposed involvement in US elections and false accusations against Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.
Dmitry Peskov denied any collaboration between the Russian government and President Donald Trump’s campaign, and said the U.S. is humiliating itself with its obsession over Russian meddling.
“The answer is very simple. No,” Dmitry Peskov told Fareed Zakaria when asked about Russians colluding with Trump’s allies last year.
“We sincerely cannot understand why American people and American politicians started the process of self-humiliation. You’re self-humiliating yourself, saying that a country can intervene in your election process,” he said, adding that it would be “simply impossible” for the Kremlin to easily influence an election of “the most powerful country in the world” with its “very, very stable political traditions.”
Dmitry Peskov argued that the US special agencies report about Russian interference in US elections does not contain any trustworthy evidence. “I would humbly say that it’s not a paper of high quality, in terms of being really trustful.”
More proof showing that these accusations are false is the fact that Vladimir Putin had never voiced support for then-presidential candidate Trump. “You would probably recall that President Putin, during the election campaign, had never answered directly a question about which candidate he supported. He kept saying that we will respect the choice of the American people,” Dmitry Peskov stated.
Dmitry Peskov also said there is nothing special in the Russian Ambassador discussing bilateral ties with some members of Donald Trump’s electoral campaign team. Sergey Kislyak talked to Trump campaign team members and future US administration officials “about the bilateral relations and… about what was going on in the United States” to provide Moscow with a better understanding of the situation on the ground, the Spokesman said.
He also noted that “every Ambassador of Russia abroad” works just like “every Ambassador of the US abroad, including [the one] in Moscow, because the more Ambassador talks to people in his country of residence, the better job he does.”
Dmitry Peskov emphasized that the Russian Ambassador also held conversations with some members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign team. “If you look at some people connected with Hillary Clinton during her campaign, you would probably see that he had lots of meetings of that kind,” he said.
At the same time, he repeated that the Russian envoy has never spoken with any US officials about the electoral process and had no intention to interfere in the 2016 election process: “there were no meetings about elections — electoral process.
Earlier Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Maria Zakharova said that the Russian Ambassador’s meetings and talks with US officials were carried out in full accordance with Article 3 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, stating that diplomatic mission functions include “negotiating with the Government of the receiving State; ascertaining by all lawful means conditions and developments in the receiving State, and reporting thereon to the Government of the sending State”.
Dmitry Peskov expressed growing frustration with continuing attempts by certain Western political circles and media to demonise Russia. “If you load the public opinion with a huge burden of fake news, if you repeat every day numerous times that Russia is guilty of everything, everything goes wrong. We sincerely want this hysteria to come to its logical end.”
He stressed that with demonising Russia the whole situation takes us away from the perspective of getting our relationship to a better condition.
Yours faithfully,
Aleksei Illiuviev
Press Attache
Russian Embassy in Guyana