Putin ordered efforts to influence US presidential election: Classified report
MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an “influence campaign” aimed at hurting Hillary Clinton and helping Donald Trump win in the 2016 presidential election, the US intelligence has revealed in a unclassified report.
The 25- page report released on Friday was the first official, full and public accounting by the US intelligence community of its assessment of Russian cyberhacking activities during the 2016 campaign and the motivations behind that hacking, CNN reported.
“We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election,” the report said.
“Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”
“Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations,” it continued.
The report said Moscow used a variety of tactics in a bid to sway the outcome.
“Moscow’s influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations — such as cyberactivity — with overt efforts by Russian government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries and paid social media users or ‘trolls’,” the report found.
The US intelligence community also released several new pieces of information to support its conclusions, CNN noted.
It noted that in the final run-up to the election, when majority of the polls favoured Clinton to win the election, Moscow shifted its campaign to influence the election to one aimed at undermining the validity of the electoral results.
“Before the election, Russian diplomats had already publicly denounced the US electoral process and were prepared to publicly call into question the validity of the results,” the report stated, adding that proRussian government bloggers had prepared a Twitter campaign on Election Night using the hashtag “#DemocracyRIP”.
President- elect Donald Trump was briefed earlier on Friday on the report by top US intelligence and law enforcement officials, and while he said he had “a constructive meeting”, he declined to publicly agree with their conclusions.
Instead, Trump stressed that “there was absolutely no effect on the outcome whatsoever”.
Trump did acknowledge in his statement the possibility that Russia could have been behind the hack, though he named China as well as a persistent cyberhacker.
However, there was no immediate response from Russian officials, although they have denied all the hacking claims, CNN said.
The US intelligence community also warned in its report that Moscow would likely continue to pursue cyberhacking to influence future elections. told reporters east of Mosul.
CTS seized the Ghufran district, previously known as alBaath, and entered neighbouring Wahda, he said.
A separate military statement said Iraqi federal police had recaptured a hospital complex in Wahda in southeastern Mosul, a significant turnaround after army units were forced to withdraw from the site last month.
Numan said fresh advances, which have gathered pace after troops were bogged down for several weeks by ISIS resistance and the presence of large numbers of civilians, were a consequence of new tactics and better coordination between different branches of the military.
CTS and federal police “are now moving in parallel on both axes” in southeastern Mosul, he said.
“We are proceeding side by side ... and advancing at the same level. This is a very important factor, thanks to which Daesh (ISIS) has not been able to move its fighters. It has to support one axis (front) at the expense of another.
“We have worn down the terrorist organisation with this type of advance.”
Friday’s night-time operation, launched after a week of planning, had been a particular success, Numan said.
CTS forces using night-vision equipment crossed the Khosr river, a tributary that runs perpendicular to the Tigris through eastern Mosul, via makeshift earth bridges after IS had destroyed permanent ones, he said.
Air strikes from the US-led coalition sped that advance into Muthanna district.