Zakharova Responds To German's Sasse on Accusations Of 'Hacker Attacks'

Maria Zakharova noted a new list of anti-Russia accusations by German Foreign Ministry’s Deputy Spokeswoman Andrea Sasse at a government news conference on September 6. she spoke about the activities of “Ghostwriter,” a group of hackers allegedly directed by Russian government agencies against the deputies of federal and local parliaments of Germany.

This is not the first time Russia has been accused of involvement in hacker attacks on German deputies. Germany made similar allegations in 2015 and 2017. the internet remembers everything. it is easy to find this information through search engines and you will understand that after the 2017 parliamentary elections the then German Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maiziere had to acknowledge the absence of any Russian influence on the voting. however, apparently Berlin is not learning from its past mistakes.

Despite our repeated requests via diplomatic channels, our German partners have not presented any evidence of Russia’s involvement in hacker attacks. I would like to emphasise that we used existing diplomatic channels for this purpose. Russian proposals to conduct a joint inquiry were ignored. at the same time, Germany has initiated two packages of anti-Russia sanctions from the EU in this context. Russia are convinced that in the case of Ghostwriter, these allegations have a foreign policy background like the similar groundless US accusations against Russia. it appears that this is yet another PR escapade in the context of the domestic political struggle in Germany on the eve of the elections to the Bundestag on September 26, 2021.

like a bad student, in accusing Russia, Berlin is trying to parrot its overseas teacher and copy whatever it does in the hope of getting good marks and gaining political points. Such statements have nothing to do with the efforts to counter threats in the information space and promote international cooperation on information security.

Russia opposes this rhetoric and these groundless accusations that are part of the campaign, to a consistent course of developing equitable, professional relations with all states in the bilateral, regional and global formats.