WASHINGTON. March 17 (Interfax) - Accusations made by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia allegedly interfered in the U.S. elections are groundless and will not contribute to the development of bilateral relations, the Russian embassy in Washington said in a statement.
"The document prepared by the U.S. intelligence community is another set of groundless accusations against our country of interfering in American internal political processes," the embassy said.
"The conclusions of the report on Russia conducting influence operations in America are confirmed solely by the confidence of the intelligence services of their self-righteousness," it said.
"Washington's actions do not lead to the normalization of bilateral relations," it said.
The U.S. intelligence community's report on foreign threats to the 2020 elections fails to provide any facts or specific evidence of such claims of Russia's interference, the embassy said.
"We state that Washington continues to practice 'megaphone diplomacy', with the main goal to maintain a negative image of Russia. To blame external players for destabilizing the situation inside the country," the embassy said.
This attitude of the administration hardly corresponds to Russia's proposed equal and mutually respectful expert dialogue in search of solutions to the most pressing issues, it said.
The report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says that foreign states did not attempt to directly interfere in the U.S. electoral processes in 2020, the U.S. intelligence community said.
There are "no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 U.S. elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results," according to the report.
At the same time, it notes that certain foreign states, such as Iran and Russia, pursued a disinformation campaign to undermine "public confidence in the electoral process" and its results.
The U.S. also did not see "persistent Russian cyber efforts" designed to influence the election outcome one way or the other, the report says.
It was also said that, based on the report released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. administration will assess the scope of other countries' attempts to influence the U.S. elections in 2020 and will start to draw up sanctions.