The building of the Russian Embassy in Rome. File photoROME, Sep 14The Russian Embassy in Rome reacted to a wave of publications in the Italian media about a report on Russia's alleged «secret financing» of politicians in two dozen countries. «The United States is once again trying to accuse Russia of interfering in the internal affairs of Western countries, in particular in the electoral process. And what is this, if not a rude attempt to manipulate public opinion on the eve of the elections?», the diplomatic mission said in a statement on its social networks. In the post, the embassy published screenshots from the websites of Italian newspapers. After receiving information from the United States, the leading political forces in Italy made mutual accusations of receiving such «help», threatened opponents with libel suits and called for the contents of the report to be made public. The exchange of such attacks, including criticism for the lack of immediate denials of involvement, has already become one of the campaign topics before the general vote on September 25. The head of the Parliamentary Committee for the Security of the Republic (Copasir), Senator Adolfo Urso, said that he had previously received information about the lack of information regarding Italy , in a report on alleged «secret financing» from the Russian Federation. According to him, he contacted Deputy Secretary of the Secretary of the Council of Ministers Franco Gabrielli, who is in charge of state security issues of the republic. The US State Department claims that Russia has spent at least $300 million since 2014 to support politicians and parties sympathetic to it in two dozen countries, AP and France Press. The US Foreign Office, according to them, has declassified information from a telegram that was sent to American embassies around the world. Moscow has repeatedly rejected Western accusations of interfering in their internal affairs. The Kremlin called the accusations absolutely unfounded, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that there were no facts confirming this. The American authorities did not name the countries where the funds were allegedly transferred, and refused to say how much money was spent on «influence operations» in Ukraine. No evidence is provided either.
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