
advertisement
US President-elect Donald Trump has responded to a slew of US election-related sanctions against Russia with a call for the country to “move on” and a conciliatory pledge to meet the US spy chiefs he has harshly criticised.
“It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” Trump said on Thursday, echoing previous prickly reactions to allegations his November win over Hillary Clinton was somehow tainted by Russian interference.
President Barack Obama on Thursday ordered a series of diplomatic and economic sanctions against Russia over the hacking which US officials say was aimed at disrupting the November election.
Trump has long treated such accusations as a thinly veiled effort by a Democratic president to delegitimise a Republican victory.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation squarely blamed Russian intelligence services on Thursday for meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, releasing the first most definitive report yet on the issue, including samples of malicious computer code said to have been used in a broad hacking campaign.
Russia has consistently denied the hacking allegations.
According to the FBI report, among the groups compromised by the FSB hacks was the Democratic National Committee, which was again infiltrated in early 2016 by another Russian agency, the military GRU.
(With inputs from PTI and Reuters)