Russian officials have rejected accusations of Russian involvement in the hack of U.S.
Democratic Party computers as "absurd" and "insulting."
U.S. presidential nominee Hillary Clinton made the claims in an interview on American television program Fox News Sunday.
“We know that Russian intelligence services hacked into the DNC, and we know that they arranged for a lot of those emails to be released, and we know that Donald Trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin,” Clinton said.
Clinton's statement comes weeks after Democratic Party officials were targeted by a cyber attack which resulted in the leak of thousands of private emails. Her campaign chairman Robby Mook earlier claimed the hack “was done by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump,” an accusation that both Trump and the Kremlin deny.
The Russian government again denied the involvement of Russian agencies in the cyber attack on Monday, calling the accusations “vague” and “absurd.”
“Official Russian departments certainly are not engaged, and have never been engaged in, cyberterrorism. It is entirely out of the question,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, as quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency.
Clinton's statement is merely part of her election campaign, Peskov said.
Russian Foreign Ministry also responded to the accusations Monday calling them “insulting and unworthy,” the Interfax news agency reported.
Andrei Krutskikh, Special
Representative of the Russian President for International Cooperation
in Information Security, also said that Washington had not officially complained about the hack.
“These
claims are put forward by people who are fighting for the
presidency. Officials in the White House avoid commenting or do so only vaguely," he told Interfax.