Hell broke loose in the U.S. this year over reports that accused Russia of interfering in the presidential election and helping Donald Trump win it against Hillary Clinton, who is known to be a strong critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Though President-elect Trump and his team blasted the intelligence agencies saying the reports were "ridiculous" and made up more excuses, intelligence officials are now highly confident that even Putin was personally in touch with the covert campaign by Russia to interfere in the election, an NBC News said.
According to two senior officials who had direct access to the information, new intelligence reports showed how Putin directed the use of material hacked from the Democrats, the news report added. Diplomatic sources and spies working for allies of the U.S. sent the sensational report, it was learnt from the officials.
What was the goal of this? According to a highly placed intelligence source, the Russian president had a number of objectives to meet through this, the report said. From a crusade against Clinton to an effort to expose American politics and also to hurt the U.S.'s allies' reliance on Washington as a global leader - the reasons were many, the source said.
Putin was particularly upset with Clinton over her role in criticizing the Russian parliamentary election in 2011. Clinton, who was the secretary of state then, was among many Western critics who had accused Putin of rigging that election through fraud.
The latest revelation will certainly hit an already strained relation between the U.S. and Russia. On the top of it, the choice of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, a man who is known to have close ties with Russia, as the next secretary of state by Trump, will heighten the prevailing tension in the U.S. over the Russia connection.
