US indicts Russian woman

The US government on Friday charged a Russian national with playing a key financial role in a Kremlin-backed plan to conduct "information warfare" against the United States, including ongoing attempts to influence next month's congressional elections.

Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, became the first person charged with a crime for attempting to interfere in the 2018 US midterm elections, according to a government official with knowledge of the investigation.

Russia called the allegations an attempt by the United States to fabricate a pretext to impose sanctions as part of a "disgraceful slander campaign" against Moscow.

Khusyaynova was the chief accountant for Project Lakhta, an operation started in 2014 and financed by a Russian oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and two companies he controls, according to a criminal complaint.

The oligarch, Evgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, and his two companies were indicted in February in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's separate investigation of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election to boost eventual winner Donald Trump over his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The case against Khusyaynova was unsealed on the same day that US law enforcement and intelligence agencies issued a warning about attempts by Russia, China, Iran and other foreign entities to interfere with Nov 6 congressional elections, in which Trump's Republicans are trying to maintain majority power in Congress, and national elections in 2020.

The complaint detailed new examples of Russians using fake personas on social media to stoke divisions over race, gun rights, voter fraud and other contentious issues. Some messages targeted next month's elections, indicating the operation has not been deterred by Mueller's indictments earlier this year.

Using social media and other avenues, the Russians are waging "information warfare against the United States," to sow distrust in the political system, according to the complaint, which charged Khusyaynova with conspiracy to defraud the United States.

The complaint included Facebook and Twitter posts that were both critical of Republicans and supportive of President Donald Trump. One post in March, for example, suggested Trump deserved the Nobel Peace Prize for his negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un aimed at denuclearization.

Trump, who at a news conference in Helsinki in July with Putin cast doubt on his own intelligence agencies' findings that Russia had meddled with the 2016 election, dismissed the latest charge against Russia as unrelated to him.

"It had nothing to do with my campaign," Trump told reporters in Scottsdale, Arizona. "If they are hackers, a lot of them probably like Hillary Clinton better than me."

The Khusyaynova case is being prosecuted by assistant US attorneys in the Eastern District of Virginia. It is not being handled by Mueller because it touches on the 2018 elections, which is not part of his remit, the government official said.

Khusyaynova oversaw the financial operations for the project, which had a proposed budget of $35 million for January 2016 to June 2018 and used those funds to wage similar campaigns in the European Union and Ukraine, in addition to the United States.