MOSCOW, May 14. /TASS/. Russia and the US cannot manage to hold an effective dialogue on eliminating incidents in the cyber sphere, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing on Thursday.
"Since 2016, <…> we have insistently offered the US <…> to sit down at the negotiating table at the expert level to make sense of what is going on in the cyber sphere. I would like to remind you that during the [Barack] Obama presidency, when [Joe] Biden was Vice President, Russia and the US created the corresponding structures for cyber incident regulation, but unfortunately, we can’t manage to establish a serious businesslike discussion," she said. "However, we are not in the way here, we are not the ones putting forward obstacles in the way of such dialogue."
Zakharova also commented on the statement by UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, in which he claimed that the actions of China and Russia in the cyber sphere are aimed to undermine the basis of democratic societies. "We need to learn to consider the situation in a broader way: this is an information-political campaign. It is held in various areas. The goal is clear: there is always a pretext for introducing sanctions or restrictions, demonizing and in this way deterring our country," she explained.
"We once again call on our Western partners to use official cooperation channels on sensitive issues instead of using the fake news system in the media and the absolutely far-fetched mechanism of setting in motion all this fake information," the diplomat said.