"We are certainly very carefully watching what is going on in the United States. But everything that is happening there is this country’s domestic affair," Peskov stressed, according to TASS.
"We have never meddled in US affairs and we are not going to interfere now," he said.
Peskov dismissed a statement by Susan Rice, a former national security advisor to US President Barack Obama (2009-2017), as wrong and not reflect the official position of the Trump administration. Earlier Rice claimed that the riots, triggered by the death of African-American man George Floyd in Minneapolis, allegedly came "right out of the Russian playbook."
In a comment on this statement, Peskov said, "Any speculation like the one you have mentioned is certainly absolutely wrong and erroneous. As far as we understand, such speculation cannot reflect Washington’s official stance."
On Sunday, Obama’s ex-advisor Rice told CNN that there were peaceful protesters focused on disparities that had to be addressed and there were extremists, who had come to "try to hijack those protests and turn them into something very different." Rice noted that based on her experience "this is right out of the Russian playbook." According to her, Russia’s goal was not just to embarrass the US but to divide Americans.
Following the tragic death of an American black man on May 25, 2020, due to the violence of a white Minneapolis police officer, nationwide protests have erupted in the United States.
ZZ/TASS