Russia on Wednesday called back its United States Ambassador Anatoly Antonov to Moscow for consultations after US President Joe Biden said his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin would “pay a price” for election meddling, reported AFP.
In an interview to ABC News, Biden was asked about an intelligence report that said Putin tried to harm his candidacy in the November presidential elections and promote that of former US President Donald Trump.
Biden replied: “He will pay a price.” When asked if he believed that Putin, who has been accused of ordering the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and other rivals, was a “killer”, Biden said: “I do.”
The US has imposed sanctions on Russia for the poisoning of Navalny, who is in prison, reported AP.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, however, did not cite specific reasons for Antonov’s return. She said that relations with the US “are in a difficult state, which Washington has brought to a dead end in recent years”.
“We are interested in preventing their irreversible degradation, if the Americans are aware of the associated risks,” she added.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told RIA Novosti, a state-owned news agency, that the “responsibility for further deterioration of Russian-American ties fully rests with the United States”.
In Washington, the State Department noted the move by Russia and said the US will “remain clear-eyed about the challenges” that Moscow poses.
When asked if the president considers Putin literally a killer or just metaphorically, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said Biden does not hold back what he considers “malign and problematic actions”.
“He’s not going to hold back in his direct communications, nor is he going to hold back publicly,” she said. “We are not going to look the other way as we saw a little bit over the last four years.”
In his interview to ABC News, Biden said that he had a long with Putin right after assuming office in January. “The conversation started off, I said, ‘I know you and you know me. If I establish this occurred, then be prepared’,” Biden said.
Meanwhile, Vyacheslav Volodin, the Speaker of Russia’s lower house of Parliament, denounced Biden for agreeing with the description of Putin as a killer. “Biden insulted the citizens of our country,” Volodin said. “Attacks on [Putin] are attacks on our country.”
Russia has always dismissed allegations of meddling in the US presidential elections. “It is absolutely groundless and unsubstantiated,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, adding that it was an “excuse” to impose new sanctions.
US intelligence report on election meddling
A declassified intelligence report released on Tuesday has said that Putin authorised operations to influence last year’s United States presidential elections in favour of Trump. However, it said there was no evidence to show that foreign actors altered votes or disrupted the voting process.
The report said that Russia’s “influence operations” to try to swing the November elections were aimed at “denigrating” the candidacy of Biden. It added that the operations were directed to undermine public confidence in the electoral process and at aggravating sociopolitical divisions in the US.
“A key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives – including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden – to US media organisations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration,” the report said.
Besides Russia, the report pointed out that Iran too tried to influence the elections but its campaign was focused on undercutting the prospects of Trump’s candidacy.
A separate report released by the US Departments of Justice and Homeland Security arrived at similar conclusions. “Although the report notes that Russian, Chinese, and Iranian government-affiliated actors materially impacted the security of certain networks during the 2020 federal elections, the departments found no evidence that any foreign government-affiliated actor manipulated election results or otherwise compromised the integrity of the 2020 federal elections,” it said.
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