Foreign Secretary: “Russia was involved in the hacking of the Democratic National Convention”

Russian Ambassador “engage with” or “beware of” Russia

The Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson has said today on Peston On Sunday in a live interview, that Russia is capable of: “Bringing down French TV stations, you’ve seen what happened in the United States where there is no question at all that they were involved in the hacking of the Democratic National Convention.

“You’ve seen what happened in Montenegro where there was an attempted coup in a European state and possibly even an attempted assassination of the leader of that state.

“There is very little doubt that the Russians are behind these things.”

When Mr Johnson was asked about claims that Russia is involved in hacking he said: “We have no evidence that the Russians are actually involved in trying to undermine our democratic process at the moment. We don’t actually have that evidence.”

“But what we do have is plenty of evidence that the Russians are capable of doing that. And there is no doubt that they’ve been up to all sorts of dirty tricks.”

This all came about as the Russian Ambassador to the UK gave the UK a warning, choose to “engage with” or “beware of” Russia.

Speaking with the Sunday Express, Alexander Yakovenko said: “Of course, the Foreign Secretary’s visit comes at a time when our official bilateral relationship is at the lowest point after the Cold War.

“We don’t need a cosy relationship with Britain, just the one based on mutual respect and national interest. The rhetoric does matter but without a positive agenda it becomes an end in itself.

Alexander Yalovenko further said: “this would be the first working visit at foreign ministers’ level in our bilateral relations over the past three years”.

He added: “We hope that it means that our British partners are interested in resumption of political dialogue.”

“Personally I think it’s either ‘engage’ or ‘beware’. Russia is just emerging from a painful period of transition,” he said. “It includes the state of our military. Russia poses a threat to no one, including the Baltic States.”

Boris Johnson will be meeting with Sergei Lavrov in Russia later this month.