Russia claims US interfered in Maltese elections, but fails to provide ‘documented evidence’

As the war of words between the United States and Russia continued to escalate this week, Russia has taken the US to task by claiming that it has interfered in elections around the world, including Maltese elections.

Russia’s official news agency, TASS, carried a report on Thursday quoting the Russian Embassy in Washington as saying, “Unlike the US, Russia does not change regimes”. It goes on to quote an unnamed Russian diplomat saying that, “Washington has an impressive record of ‘achievements’ in this area” and that there are “documented facts of US meddling in elections” in Malta and a number of other countries.

This newspaper sought clarifications and the ‘documented evidence’ from the Russian Embassy in Malta and was referred to their colleagues in the United States. Questions sent to the Russian Embassy in Washington, however, had remained unanswered and unacknowledged as of yesterday.

The Russian Embassy’s comments came in response to statements, made during Mike Pompeo’s confirmation hearings on his Secretary of State candidacy on Thursday, during which “we have once again heard unfounded accusations of Russia’s meddling in US electoral processes both from the US legislators and the candidate himself“, the embassy said.

“With that, they arrogantly compared US engagements (“promoting democracy and human rights”) to Russian actions (“undermining Western democracies” and “desire to influence the outcome of elections”),” the statement reads.

“We would like to once again state that Russia does not engage in regime changes, meddling in domestic affairs of other states or masterminding staged ‘revolutions’. The US, however, has mastered these techniques, as they have quite an experience in this area,” the Russian embassy said in a statement.

“The US regularly violates national sovereignty of other countries by interfering in their domestic affairs. The favourite tactic of the American intelligence services is to intervene in electoral processes of foreign states and stage coups in order to topple undesired regimes,” according to the statement.

Other countries where Russia says the US has “meddled” in elections, include Albania, Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, UK, Haiti, Guyana, Guatemala, Greece, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Iceland, Iran, Costa Rica, Cambodia, Laos, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nepal, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Romania, San Marino, Slovakia, Somalia, Thailand, Ukraine, Uruguay, Chile, Sri Lanka and Jamaica.