DEFLECTION

Putin: Russia Has No Interest in Hacking U.S.

“There is nothing there that is in Russia’s interests.”

In some of his first public comments since the U.S. officially concluded that Russia was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computer networks, Russian President Vladimir Putin said it is not in his country’s interest to breach U.S. institutions. “Certain hackers have released certain information about how unseemly Mrs. Clinton’s headquarters have been behaving during the election campaign,” Putin said at a CNBC forum Wednesday. “They have been supporting one party candidate at the expense of another. And then this hysteria started that this was done in the interests of Russia. There is nothing there that is in Russia’s interests.” Homeland Security and National Intelligence officials said last Friday that senior-level Russian officials ordered the hacks.