MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th December, 2020) The Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, slammed on Thursday as groundless Washington's allegations of Moscow's complicity in the large-scale hacking attacks on US Federal agencies, commenting on US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's recent claim that Russia is "pretty clearly" behind this.
Back in May 2019, Pompeo pointed to Washington's desire to improve bilateral relations, after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Zakharova recalled.
"And now we hear hostile rhetoric by the country's top diplomat, which certainly does not contribute to normalization of the bilateral dialogue. Mike Pompeo's statement has not added anything new to the already traditional set of accusations related to hacker attacks ... We hear these unsubstantiated accusations against Russia all the time," Zakharova said at a briefing.
At the same time, US outgoing President Donald Trump has just recently suggested that another country could be behind the attack, which runs counter to Pompeo's statement, Zakharova recalled.
"We keep wondering why the outgoing administration, which has contributed to quite a poor state of the Russian-US relations, continues making the relations even worse," the spokeswoman added, also noting that the accusations could be aimed at "preventing President-elect [Joe] Biden from establishing cooperation with Moscow, including in the international information security."
