US President Joe Biden told reporters that a meeting of the Russian-American working group on cybersecurity is due next week.

“We have created ... a joint committee.

The meeting will take place, I think, on the 16th.

And I believe that we will establish cooperation, ”- said Biden.

The leaders of Russia and the United States agreed to start consultations in this area during the June summit in Geneva.

This was announced by Vladimir Putin following the talks.

The topic of cybersecurity was also raised on July 9 in a telephone conversation between the heads of the two states.

"In the context of recent reports of a series of cyber attacks allegedly carried out from the territory of Russia, Vladimir Putin noted that, despite the readiness of the Russian side to jointly suppress criminal manifestations in the information space, over the past month no requests have been received from the competent US departments on these issues." , - noted in a press release from the Kremlin.

During the conversation, the Russian president noted that interaction between Russia and the United States in this area should be "permanent, professional and non-politicized, carried out using specialized channels of data exchange between authorized state structures within the framework of bilateral legal mechanisms, as well as in compliance with the provisions of international law." ...

"The leaders emphasized the need for substantive and constructive cooperation in the field of cybersecurity, the continuation of appropriate contacts," the Kremlin said.

  • Joe Biden

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In turn, a senior official of the US presidential administration said during a telephone briefing on July 9 that Biden is committed to working with Russia to neutralize threats from ransomware viruses.

“The President firmly believes in such interaction at the level of leaders, including on this issue.

And we are engaged in this kind of diplomacy not because we often or always agree with each other, but precisely because we have disagreements in so many areas, including this one, ”the White House website quoted him as saying.

The administration also said that Biden, relying on his May cybersecurity decree, called on "governments and departments to modernize their defenses" to successfully respond to threats in the cyber sphere.

At the same time, the White House stressed that Washington does not count on rapid improvement in this area.

"This is a broad campaign, and it will not give an instant result on an on / off basis, like a switch, but we will monitor this issue for a certain time and pay special attention to it," the American side said in a statement.

Mutual claims

It is worth noting that Moscow has repeatedly offered the United States to agree on interaction in the cyber sphere in order to exclude unwanted incidents.

Until now, however, such initiatives have not found a response in Washington.

So, in September 2020, Vladimir Putin announced a number of proposals for cooperation in the field of cybersecurity between Russia and the United States, calling the risk of large-scale confrontation in the digital sphere one of the main strategic challenges of our time.

Then the President proposed to restore a full-scale bilateral interagency dialogue on key issues of ensuring international information security at a high level.

In addition, he called for maintaining the continuous and effective operation of communication channels between the competent departments of the two countries through the rapid response teams to computer incidents, nuclear risk reduction centers and high-level officials who oversee international cybersecurity issues.

  • Vladimir Putin at a news conference following talks with Joe Biden in Geneva

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In addition, the Kremlin took the initiative to conclude an intergovernmental agreement that would make it possible to prevent incidents in cyberspace "by analogy with the current Soviet-American Agreement on the Prevention of Incidents on the High Seas and in the Airspace Above It of May 25, 1972".

At the same time, Putin called on all states of the world to think about taking a political commitment not to strike first with the use of information technologies.

However, the previous US administration rejected these proposals.

At the same time, Washington regularly and unfoundedly accuses Moscow of involvement in organizing hacker attacks on American facilities.

According to analysts, such accusations began to be heard especially often after 2016, when the topic of Russia's "interference" in the presidential elections began to be unfolded.

Recall that then Washington accused Moscow of hacker attacks on the servers of the National Committee of the Democratic Party, as a result of which incriminating information about Hillary Clinton, who was claiming the highest state post, got into the network.

At the same time, the United States did not present any evidence of the involvement of the Russian Federation in these events.

In the future, the accusations from the American side continued.

One of the high-profile incidents was the hacking in 2020 of SolarWinds' Orion software.

Then the hackers managed to inject a virus into a program update, which was then downloaded and used by thousands of SolarWinds customers.

Among them were leading US government agencies, as well as more than 400 large American companies.

In the spring of 2021, Washington blamed the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service for the cyberattack, and in early July, the US and UK intelligence agencies published a joint report in which they accused the Russian General Intelligence Directorate of hacker attacks "against hundreds of government and private targets around the world."

In addition, a cyberattack on the American pipeline company Colonial Pipeline received wide media coverage in May this year.

Hackers used a ransomware virus against it, as a result, the company was forced to shut down part of its systems.

True, this time Washington did not blame the Russian authorities, although the American media suggested that the hacker group that organized the attack could come from Russia.

Also on russian.rt.com "In retrospect of attempts to contain Moscow": why the US again accused Russia of "malicious cyber activity"

At the same time, Washington did not provide any evidence of Moscow's involvement in these incidents.

The Russian authorities have repeatedly spoken about the groundlessness of such accusations.

At the same time, as Vladimir Putin noted at a press conference following the summit in Geneva, "the largest number of cyber attacks in the world are carried out from US cyberspace."

“Canada is in second place, then two Latin American countries, then Great Britain.

Russia is not included in this list of countries, from the territory from whose cyberspace the largest number of cyber attacks of various kinds is carried out, ”the president said.

He also stressed that Washington, unlike Moscow, refuses to make contact in the event of incidents in cyberspace.

According to him, in 2020, Russia received ten requests from the United States regarding cyberattacks on objects of the United States of America, and in 2021 - two requests.

The Russian Federation gave comprehensive answers to all of them.

“In turn, Russia sent 45 such requests to the relevant structure of the United States last year, and 35 in the first half of this year. We have not received a single answer so far.

This suggests that we have something to work on, ”Putin said.

"A step forward for both countries"

According to analysts, despite the fact that under Biden the stream of accusations against Moscow of involvement in cyber attacks did not dry up, the current American president nevertheless took a more constructive position on this issue than his predecessor.

“The new administration has a different approach.

It aims at dialogue with Russia in this area.

Therefore, if negotiations begin, then there is hope that the parties will come to some agreements.

The need for such consultations has long been ripe, since a lot of problems and mutual claims have accumulated in this area, "Valery Garbuzov, director of the Institute of the USA and Canada of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained in a conversation with RT.

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At the same time, he refrained from forecasting the prospects for the negotiations.

“The consultations can take quite a long time, so it is difficult to give any assessment now.

But it is important that both the Russian Federation and the United States see that both sides are ready to take some steps to resolve the problem.

If there is a willingness to compromise, then there is hope that it will be possible to reach an agreement, ”Garbuzov said.

Vladimir Batyuk, head of the Center for Political-Military Studies at the Institute for the United States and Canada, RAS, shares a similar point of view.

“Whether the parties will be able to establish constructive interaction is a difficult question from a technical point of view.

It is very difficult, for example, to determine where the cyberattacks are actually coming from.

In addition, the negotiations may be influenced by domestic political factors in the United States and the increasingly complicated situation in the world.

Nevertheless, the beginning of the dialogue inspires optimism, "said the interlocutor of RT.

Valery Garbuzov added that a positive outcome of the negotiations will not only reduce tensions in the field of cybersecurity, but will have a beneficial effect on Russian-American relations in general.

“If we manage to cooperate and carry out joint operations, it will increase the level of trust. By the way, there is such experience - the services for the fight against terrorism of Russia and the United States are successfully cooperating. Now, if the dialogue in the cyber sphere developed in a similar way, it would be a step forward for both countries and the whole world, ”the expert concluded.