The government of Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing to “target” the midterm congressional elections that will be held later this year, says CIA Director Mike Pompeo, repeating claims that Moscow seeks to interfere in other countries’ political affairs.
Speaking to BBC in an interview published late Monday, Pompeo said there were no signs that Russia had decreased its attempts at subversion in Europe and the US.
"I haven't seen a significant decrease in their activity," the spymaster claimed, noting that he expected Russian to interfere in the November elections as they allegedly did in the US 2016 presidential election, which Republican nominee Donald Trump won.
“I have every expectation that they will continue to try and do that but I’m confident that America will be able to have a free and fair election [and] that we will push back in a way that is sufficiently robust that the impact they have on our election won’t be great,” Pompeo said.
US intelligence agencies claim Russia-linked hackers and their programmed online bots were able to successfully skew the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump by releasing damaging information on his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
This has led the FBI and Congress to launch high-profile investigations into reports that Trump and his team might have colluded with Moscow.
The Twitter social networking service said in a report to Congress over the weekend that Twitter bots allegedly linked to Russia shared Trump’s tweets over 470,000 times during the final months of the election. For Clinton, the number stood at around 50,000.
US President Donald Trump says he is willing to talk to Special Counsel Robert Mueller “under oath."
Trump has repeatedly denied the allegations and condemned the probe, which is led by Special Investigator Robert Mueller, as a “hoax.”
Putin has dismissed the collusion claims as mere “fantasies” and a “manifestation of continuing domestic political struggle” in the US.
"All this was made up by people who are opposed to Trump,” he said in December.
Russian sanctions ‘not needed now’
Meanwhile, the Trump White House informed on Monday that implementing a new Russia sanctions legislation that was passed last year was not necessary yet because it was already "serving as a deterrent."
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle voted last July to pass a bill that called for new economic pressure on firms doing "significant" business with Moscow's defense and intelligence sectors.
The Trump administration had until Monday to implement the sanctions but it instead informed Congress that potential targets of future penalties "have been put on notice, both publicly and privately.”
A US State Department spokesperson told Politico on Monday that the administration was "using this legislation as Congress intended to press Russia to address our concerns related to its aggression in Ukraine, interference in other nations’ domestic affairs and abuses of human rights."
In a media briefing, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said later the day that Moscow regards the US reports about Russia’s interference in Ukraine and other countries as an unfriendly attempt to sway the March presidential election in Russia but it would fail to impact the vote.
Hello, my name is Godwin Brain. I'm an ICT Analyst, blogger, web-designer and a writer. 
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