U.S. Secretary of state Rex Tillerson said that the theme of Russia’s intervention in U.S. elections is an obstacle to improving relations between the two countries and this issue needs to be resolved, RIA Novosti reported.
According to him, this issue was raised at the meeting of presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald trump at the G20 summit in Germany.
“Regarding the discussion of the President of trump and Putin about the 2016 elections …this was the first topic of our conversation. President trump has raised this issue directly to President Putin and to be honest, we didn’t expect other answer than the one received,” said Tillerson.
According to him, pendency of the question on the minds of the American people, as well as hindering the improvement of bilateral relations. “This issue needs to be resolved before we can assure the American people that there is no intervention in our elections, neither from Russia nor from anyone else,” said Tillerson.
Earlier, on 9 July, trump wrote on Twitter that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has categorically denied allegations of Moscow’s intervention in U.S. elections. “I twice firmly asked President Putin about the Russian intervention in our elections. It is categorically rejected,” wrote the head of the White house.
The Russian leader said that trump paid a lot of attention to the question of alleged Russian interference in the election process in the United States. And, according to Putin, the head of the White house “took his arguments about non-interference of Moscow”.
The first meeting of Putin and trump took place on 7 July and lasted more than two hours.
Russia has repeatedly accused of meddling in the US presidential election with the help of hackers. American journalists and officials asserted that they allegedly kidnapped the correspondence Democrats, later posted online, and tried to penetrate into the electronic system of counting of votes.
Moscow denies such accusations. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not rule out that the mysterious hackers could be based in the United States.