Top senator expects US will exert ‘unprecedented pressure’ to influence Russian presidential polls
The Chair of Russia’s Foreign Affairs Committee expects that the US will seek to influence the country’s presidential election next year, saying Washington will only settle for victory by a pro-Western candidate.
“The United States recognizes elections as fair and democratic only when they are won by pro-western candidates,” Senator Konstantin Kosachev wrote on his Facebook page on Friday.
“In the case of any other outcome, election procedures and results are anathema to them,” he added.
“Judging by the increasing demagogy about alleged Russian interference [in US polls], they have already started their ‘artillery raid’ ahead of the Russian presidential elections. It is likely that the scale of pressure there will be unprecedented.”
Kosachev posted the comments in response to a statement by US Chief Envoy Nikki Haley on Thursday, in which she accused the Russian Government of meddling in US politics and politics across the world.
"When a country can come and interfere in another country's elections, that is warfare," Haley said.
"The Russian Government has made a project of turning Americans against each other," she stated, according to Reuters.
Kosachev continued his response by saying that he felt bewildered that such statements were being made by an official representative of a nation that has the strongest economy and most powerful military in the world.
He noted that, according to its own data, the US interfered in the election processes of foreign nations 81 times between 1946 and 2000.
“This number does not include their special operations and military coups that took place in countries that elected candidates who the United States was not content with, such as Iran, Congo, Chile and Guatemala,” wrote the Senator.
“More than that, as demonstrated by the Arab Spring and pro-Western revolutions in post-Soviet states, interfering with the political processes of other nations is the main tool by which the US maintains its international influence.
“This has followed military experiments that were clearly unsuccessful, such as the Iraq campaign, with Colin Powell’s infamous vial used as an excuse.”
Last June, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the US of repeated and aggressive meddling in Russian politics through US diplomatic staff and NGOs.
“[It happened] in 2000 and in 2012, this always happened. But especially aggressively in 2012,” Putin said in an interview with US filmmaker Oliver Stone.
Putin used the example of US diplomatic workers, who had actually campaigned for the Russian opposition.
“They gathered opposition forces and financed them, and went to opposition rallies,” he noted, adding that he had raised this issue with members of the past administration, including former US President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State John Kerry.
