MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Friday that CNN's allegations that a Russia-linked campaign used the mobile game Pokemon Go to incite racial tensions in the United States are dull.
"Judging by CNN's logic, African Americans shape their public stance by playing Pokemon Go. This is how dull the broadcaster explained the emergence of racial problems in the modern United States. Russians are to blame again… as well as the pokemons they control," Zakharova said on Facebook.
On Thursday, the CNN broadcaster reported that allegedly Russian-linked social media campaign "Don't Shoot Us" used the popular augmented reality game to fuel racial tensions among the US citizens by encouraging people involved in the Black Lives Matter movement to play at the sites where police violence took place. The players reportedly were also told to call their pokemons after the victims who died at the hand of police.
Thus, in September, Facebook said that Russia-linked entities bought political ads to influence the outcome of the presidential campaign.
On Monday, the Washington Post newspaper reported citing its sources that the Google company had for the first time uncovered evidence that "Russian agents" used the company's platforms, such as YouTube, Google search, Gmail, to influence the US presidential election by buying and promoting ads.
