Putting the Cold War into perspective

Russian meddling in American Presidential elections

After the Cold War era, the US and Russia found ways to cooperate both on land and in space. However, their relationship was never easy to maintain as several events since the Cold War have brought up older issues such as nuclear weapons, human rights violations, opposing views on international politics and interventions in elections and military conflicts.

In 2016, the CIA, FBI, and the National Security Agency accused Russia of trying to influence the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, for example through attempts to discredit former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the hope that Donald Trump would be elected President. Russian President Vladimir Putin denied being involved in these attempts.

In June 2017, US Department of Homeland Security officials stated that Russian hackers had attempted to find weaknesses in election-related computer systems in more than twenty states.

Then, in February 2018, US federal prosecutors charged several Russian individuals and companies for involvement in the campaign using the influence of government agencies, state-sponsored media, cyber hacking, and paid internet “trolls”. These efforts were mainly focused on portraying the Democrat candidate, Hillary Clinton, in a largely negative way. The defamation campaign took place on television, radio, as well as on social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, where hundreds of false news stories were posted daily.

During the investigations, other individuals involved with the Trump campaign and the Presidential Administration were charged with various crimes, from lying to the FBI about meetings with Russian nationals, to failure to register as foreign agents.

The news of the Russian interference also led to several sanctio...