Russia says the U.S. has meddled in its upcoming presidential vote

(Image credit: KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images)

published 5 March 2018

Russian voters will head to the ballot box on March 18, where they are expected to deliver a decisive re-election victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin. In the run-up to that election, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in comments reported by state-run media Monday, the United States has attempted to meddle with the vote.

Ryabkov did not share the evidence he claims Moscow has obtained, but he said that "U.S. attempts to interfere in our internal affairs have been particularly active over the recent years." Also Monday, Kremlin representative Dmitry Peskov said Washington has a "rich tradition" of tampering with other countries' politics.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

The United States does indeed have a tradition of election meddling, as The New York Times has detailed. "We've been doing this kind of thing since the CIA was created in 1947," Loch K. Johnson, an intelligence community expert, told the Times. "We've used posters, pamphlets, mailers, banners — you name it. We've planted false information in foreign newspapers. We've used what the British call 'King George’s cavalry': suitcases of cash."

Explore More

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

Subscribe to The Week

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox