Last month, the White House directly blamed Russia’s foreign intelligence service—the SVR—for the humiliating SolarWinds hack, which managed to compromise the networks of at least nine federal agencies. Now, the head of that agency has publicly denied responsibility, but admitted that he was left extremely impressed by what the hackers managed to achieve. In an interview with BBC News, SVR Director and Putin ally Sergei Naryshkin said with a smirk that he was “flattered” to be blamed for the hack, but said he didn’t want to “claim the creative achievements of others as his own.” He added that the U.S. accusations “are like a bad detective novel... pathetic,” and went on to suggest that a U.S. agency may have carried out the attack, but didn’t explain what the possible motive would be. The White House announced new sanctions against Russia in April to hit back against the SolarWinds hack and repeated election interference.