Russia says U.S. hacking accusations groundless, exploited in election campaign

The U.S. accusations of "Russian hackers" are groundless and exploited in the country's presidential election campaign, a senior Russian diplomat said Saturday amid escalating tensions between the two powers.

On Friday, the U.S. intelligence agencies issued a joint statement claiming that Russia was behind the recent hacking of emails from U.S. political organizations in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 elections.

The accusations are just "dirty tricks" of the incumbent U.S. administration, which lack evidences and are fabricated to "escalate an unprecedented anti-Russia hysteria," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in an online statement.

Moscow has repeatedly offered to hold bilateral consultations with Washington on fighting against illegal cyberspace activities, he said, but the Russia side "has not received any response yet."

On Friday shortly after the United States threw the blame on Moscow, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed it as "nonsense," saying that many of the cyber attacks on Russian President Vladimir Putin's website "can be traced to the U.S.," but the Kremlin is not blaming the White House. Endi