U.S. intelligence assessments have found that Russia tried to influence the election campaign in 2016 to help Trump win, and again in 2020, when he lost the election to Joe Biden.
Russia is again supporting Republican Donald Trump as the likely winner in this year’s US presidential election, US intelligence officials have said.
The official, briefing reporters on U.S. election security, was careful not to name the former president and leading Republican candidate when asked who Moscow would like to see as the next U.S. president.
But he suggested Russia was backing Trump, adding that U.S. intelligence agencies had not changed their assessment of Moscow’s support since the last election.
“Given the U.S. role in Ukraine and broader policy toward Russia, Russia’s preferences for the presidential election have not changed compared to past elections,” an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said Tuesday.
Previous investigations have found that Moscow sought to use influence campaigns to help Trump win the elections he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 and then lost to current U.S. President Joe Biden in 2020.
Russian influence operations
So far, the US has not detected any plans by any country to “degrade or disrupt” the US’s ability to hold the presidential election in November, officials said at a briefing attended by ODNI, the FBI and the National Coordinator for Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, the agency that conducts cyber defense for the US government and private industry.
But ODNI officials said Russia continues to try to influence specific groups of U.S. voters in battleground states through social media and other means by spreading “divisive rhetoric” and smearing certain politicians, though they did not name them.
“Russia is trying to influence the election with a whole-of-government approach that includes the president, Congress and public opinion,” he said.
Moscow is “deciding which candidate to support or oppose primarily based on further U.S. support for Ukraine and its stance on related issues,” the official said.
“This is a tactic we have seen primarily through social media efforts” and “using the American voice to push their narrative,” the official added.
The Trump campaign countered the assessment of Russian support by saying Biden is weak on Russia, as shown by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“While President Trump was in the Oval Office, Russia and all of America’s adversaries were deterred by fear of how the United States would respond,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in a statement.
The Russian Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has frequently criticized the size of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, which has risen to about $60 billion since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, and has called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “the greatest salesman of all time.”
President Trump’s two national security advisers have laid out a plan to halt US military aid to Ukraine unless it begins negotiations with Russia to end the war.
