Ivan Nechepurenko

The Kremlin warned that reported American hacking into Russia’s electric power grid could escalate into a cyberwar with the United States, but insisted that it was confident in the system’s ability to repel electronic attacks. Dmitri S. Peskov,  Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman, also raised concerns that President Donald Trump was reportedly not informed about the effort, which was the subject of a New York Times report on June 15 that detailed an elaborate system of cybertools deployed by the United States inside Russia’s energy system and other targets.

The Russian government declared the broadcasters Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty “foreign agents” on Dec 5, in retaliation for a similar action against Russian state-run news outlets in the United States. The Kremlin-financed television station RT America and its affiliated news agency, Sputnik, complied in Nov with an order from the Justice Department that they registered as foreign agents. This followed a report by American intelligence agencies in January that concluded that the Kremlin was using RT America as a tool “to undermine faith in the U.S.