US President Joe Biden accused Russia of wanting to interfere in the 2022 midterm elections, when members of Congress, governors and other local offices are chosen, in a speech on Tuesday to government officials. information.).
“Look at what Russia is already doing with the 2022 elections and disinformation. It is a total violation of our sovereignty,” the president said during a visit to the National Intelligence Directorate’s office near Washington. In this election, scheduled for November 2022, all seats in the House of Representatives and a third of the seats in the Senate will be renewed.
Biden also attacked President Vladimir Putin, pointing out that Russia “has a real problem” because his country is an economy that has “nuclear weapons and oil wells and nothing else.” “He knows he’s in trouble and in my opinion that makes him even more dangerous.”
Another concern expressed by the president during his speech was the increase in cyber attacks. “If we find ourselves in a war, in a real armed war, with another great power, it will be because of a cyber attack,” he said. Russia remained in the sights of the Democrat, who stressed that Washington views both Moscow and Beijing as threats in this regard.
Cybersecurity has entered Biden’s management priority list after a series of major attacks this year against large companies such as Colonial Pipeline, JBS’s US subsidiary, and software company Kaseya. The actions impacted both fuel and food distribution in part of the country.
During the meeting between Biden and Putin in Geneva in mid-June, the American shared a list of critical infrastructure that the United States considers prohibited. Since then, senior officials of the Democratic administration’s national security team have been in constant contact with their peers in the Kremlin, the White House said.
The US president also highlighted threats from China, referring to the country’s leader Xi Jinping as someone who is very serious about “becoming the most powerful military force in the world, as well as the greatest. and the world’s largest economy. world “in the 2040s.
During his speech to around 120 officials and officials, Biden also thanked members of US intelligence agencies, stressed their confidence in the work they do and said he would not exert political pressure on them. The National Intelligence Directorate Office oversees 17 intelligence organizations in the country.
“I will never politicize the work you do. You have my word,” he promised. The US president’s statements clearly diverge from those of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who had a controversial relationship with intelligence agencies on issues such as Russian interference in the 2016 election and the role of these organizations in the revelation that the Republican had pressured Ukraine to investigate its then rival.