Russia is ready for dialogue with the United States on all issues of global cybersecurity, but the opposition of US President Donald Trump is preventing him from creating a team for practical cooperation, told Andrey Krutskikh, Ambassador at Large of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
“Our president already said so in Beijing. In particular, he noted that we had offered to the US side a whole range of agreements, including on incident prevention in the information sphere, so let us discuss and cooperate,” Krutskikh, who is also the special representative of the Russian president for international cooperation in information security, said..
According to the Russian official, such cooperation is possible if the United States were to present constructive suggestions and if it were ready for equal dialogue.
“We keep hearing that they do not have a team. The opposition is preventing Trump from creating such a negotiating team. All of our offers remain on the table. Because all of these attacks of global criminals, of global terrorism are of immediate interest. Therefore we need to joint efforts. We need a joint plan of action, we need to make sure we are on the same page. Trump’s opponents are preventing him from doing so,” Krutskikh added.
The official noted that Moscow had a professional team that was ready to discuss any specific proposals, and “ideology” for such talks, while readiness for dialogue from US partners was lacking.
“Let’s seriously discuss this topic, any specific proposal. There are lots of them, starting from a global convention on fight against cybercrimes, the project for which had been twice presented by Moscow, up to working out the rules of responsible behavior in the information space by the states,” Krutskikh said.
In April, the Russian prosecutor general proposed to amend law regulating cybersecurity, toughening responsibility for cybercrimes and expanding the black list of websites which justify and promote terrorism.