U.S. intelligence assessments found that Russia tried to influence campaigns to help Trump win in 2016, and again in the failed 2020 race against Joe Biden.
Russia again favors Republican Donald Trump as its preferred candidate to win this year’s US presidential election, a US intelligence official said.
The official, who briefed reporters on U.S. election security, was careful not to name the former president and presumptive Republican nominee when asked who Moscow wants to see as the next U.S. president.
But he indicated that Russia favored Trump, adding that the US intelligence community had not changed its assessment of Moscow’s preference from previous elections.
“We have not observed a change in Russia’s preferences for the presidential race relative to previous elections, given the role the US is playing towards Ukraine and broader policy towards Russia,” said the official from the Director’s Office of National Intelligence (ODNI). he said on Tuesday.
Previous assessments concluded that Moscow tried, through influence campaigns, to help Trump win in 2016 against Hillary Clinton and in the 2020 campaign, which he lost to current US President Joe Biden.
Russian influence operations
So far, the U.S. has not detected plans by any country to “degrade or disrupt” the country’s ability to hold presidential elections in November, officials said at the briefing attended by ODNI, the FBI and the National Security and Resilience Coordinator. Critical Infrastructures. – an agency that conducts cyber defense for the U.S. government and private industry.
But Russia, the ODNI official said, continues through social media and other means to try to influence specific groups of US voters in swing states, promoting “divisive narratives and denigrating specific politicians”, whose names he did not mention.
“Russia is taking a government approach to influencing elections, including presidential elections, Congress and public opinion,” he said.
Moscow “determines which candidates it is willing to support or oppose, largely based on their stance on more US aid to Ukraine and related issues,” the official said.
“These are all the tactics we’ve seen before, mainly through social media efforts” and “using US voices to amplify their narratives,” the official added.
Trump’s election campaign responded to the assessment of Russian support by saying Biden was weak on Russia, as evidenced by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“When President Trump was in the Oval Office, Russia and all of America’s adversaries were deterred because they feared how the United States would react,” Karoline Leavitt, press secretary for the Trump campaign, said in a statement.
The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump has frequently criticized the scale of US military support for Ukraine, which amounts to around $60 billion since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. He has also called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “the biggest seller of ever”.
Two of Trump’s national security advisers have outlined plans to end US military support for Ukraine unless Kiev opens negotiations with Russia to end the war.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
