President Trump's ambassador to the United Nations has urged her fellow Americans to view Russia as a “serious threat” as part of her first official interview.
Nikki Haley, who was appointed UN ambassador in January 2017, warned that the United States must take Russia “seriously.”
“We cannot trust Russia. We should never trust Russia," she told America's NBC news.
Her statement came after two Russian security agents were accused by U.S. authorities of stealing data from 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014.
Russian nationals Dmitry Dokuchaev, 33, and Igor Sushchin, 43, are both reported to be members of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB.)
The U.S. Department of Justice accused the men of taking part in the Yahoo hack on Wednesday, along with 29-year-old Russian cyber-criminal Alexey Belan.
A fourth man, dual Canadian and Kazakh national Karim Baratov, was arrested in connection with the case by Canadian authorities on Tuesday.
The four men face 47 criminal charges related to the hack, including conspiracy, computer fraud, economic espionage, theft of trade secrets and aggravated identity theft, the Justice Department said in a press release.
It is not the first occasion where Haley's harsh stance on Moscow has provided a sharp contrast with that of the U.S. president. In her first address to the UN, Haley condemned Russia's “aggressive actions” in the Donbass region and demanded that the annexed Crimean peninsula be returned to Ukraine.
"We do want to better our relations with Russia," Haley said. "However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions."
