U.S. State Department Urged Russia to Stop Interfering in Democratic Processes

Washington welcomed the Facebook decision to remove accounts controlled from abroad and provoking division in the United States before the midterm elections to Congress. The US State Department called on Moscow to stop undermining American democracy. “We demand that Russia and all other malign actors immediately cease this reckless behavior,” twitted U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert on Wednesday. U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo have repeatedly stated that Washington will not tolerate other countries attempts, including the Russian Federation, to undermine American democratic processes and institutions, reads the document. At the same time, Nauert welcomed facebook’s decisions to remove accounts controlled from abroad and provoking division and violence in the United States. “These efforts are part of a broader external campaign aimed at weakening America and threatening our way of life by pitting citizens against each other and sowing discord in general. We urge all technology companies to take an aggressive approach to this insidious problem”, said U.S. State Department spokeswoman. Facebook deleted suspicious pages and accounts A day earlier, Facebook deleted 32 Facebook and Instagram pages with “coordinated inauthentic behavior” aiming to mislead users about the nature of actions and goals of the individuals and organizations behind them. According to Facebook, accounts are associated with the march of white nationalists and ultra-right ones to take place on August 10 on the eve of the disorders anniversary in Charlottesville. As media says, the coordinated activity in social networks could affect the midterm election to the U.S. Congress on November 6. According to Facebook representatives, they are still in “the very early stages of our investigation” and do not have all the facts to find out who may be behind the campaign. Facebook representatives informed about “early stage of the investigation” and stressed that they do not yet have all the facts to determine who is behind the campaign. They did not directly refer to the “”Russian trace”, but made parallels with the activities of the Russian Internet Research Agency, accused of interfering in the elections in the US in 2016. Source: DW