Russian President Vladimir Putin personally supervised his intelligence agencies in hacking the US presidential election, three US officials revealed on Thursday. 

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The hacks were reportedly from a general effort to discredit the country's election process to attemp to support Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Trump has reacted angrily to claims that Russia tried to influence the election by hacking people and institutions, including the Democratic Party systems, in an effort to help him win. The US president elect insisted that he won the Nov. 8 election fairly.

Russian authorities, on the other hand, have denied accusations that they meddled with the election. However, the US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the US intelligence community is fairly certain that Russia carried out cyber attacks on the election.

"This began merely as an effort to show that American democracy is no more credible than Putin's version is," one of the officials revealed.

According to the official, the hacking campaign gradually started from its initial objective to publicize Democratic flag-bearer Hillary Clinton's shortcomings. The hackers were also targeting Republican institutions, but they gradually started ignoring that campaign.

The officials say that by the fall, the hacking was shifted as an effort to help Trump's campaign because Putin believed that a Trump presidency would be much friendlier to Russia. Putin was totally convinced that Trump would be a more pliable president than Hillary Clinton on the matter of economic sanctions.

Earlier, media reports revealed that US intelligence officials were highly confident that Putin personally invested in the Russian cyber campaign against the United States.

But speaking to his country's media, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that he was "dumbstruck" by the accusations.

"I think this is just silly, and the futility of the attempt to convince somebody of this is absolutely obvious," the minister said.

Meanwhile, the US officials argued that the fact Putin was in charge of the hackings should not come as a surprise.

"If anything, given his background as a KGB officer, Putin has a much tighter grip on all Russian intelligence operations, civilian and military, foreign and domestic, than any democratic leader does," one of the officials said.

The reports of Russian hacks have caused concerns on both sides of the political divide in the Congress. Top Republicans have broken ranks with Trump and are calling for closer scrutiny.

TagsRussia, Vladimir Putin, US, donald trump, Hillary Clinton