During a speech at the Economic Times’ Global Business Summit on Monday, former Vice President Dick Cheney made some strong statements regarding Russia, saying that there is “no question” the Russian President along with the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In some cases, he added, such a move could be considered “an act of war.”
“The fact that he took his capabilities in the cyber area and tried to influence our election, there’s not any argument at this stage that somehow the election of President Trump was not legitimate, but there’s no question there was a very serious effort made by Mr. Putin and his government and his organization to interfere in major ways our basic fundamental democratic processes,” the former Vice President said.
“In some quarters that would be considered an act of war. I think it’s the kind of conduct and activity we’ll see going forward,” he added.
Cheney said that he “would not underestimate the weight that we as Americans assign to Russian attempts to interfere with our process.”
“We know he’s attempted it previously in other states in the Baltics,” Cheney said earlier in the conference, saying that he believed Putin had “designs on the Baltics” and would like to take parts of Eastern Europe like he did with Crimea.
“I think he has designs on the Baltics. … We know he wanted Crimea — he took it,” he said.
“It looks to me like that’s changing fairly dramatically as I watch Mr. Putin operate in the Soviet Union,” Cheney continued. “He believed that the end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union was a disaster and I think he has aspirations to correct that.”
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