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MOSCOW/WASHINGTON. – The Kremlin yesterday slammed Washington for pointing the finger at President Vladimir Putin over cyber attacks targeting the US election, after Barack Obama pledged to retaliate against Russian hacking.“At this point they need to either stop talking about this or finally present some sort of proof. Otherwise this looks extremely scurrilous,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists during a visit to Japan.

Obama on Thursday warned that the United States would take action against Moscow after the White House accused Putin of direct involvement in cyber attacks designed to influence the US election.

“I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action,” Obama told NPR radio.

“And we will, at a time and place of our own choosing.”

The outgoing US president’s remarks dramatically upped the stakes in a dispute between the world’s leading nuclear powers over interference that may have swayed last month’s tight election in which Republican billionaire Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Obama’s threat came after the White House ratcheted up allegations over the Russian hacking by personally tying Kremlin strongman Putin to the attacks.

“I don’t think things happen in the Russian government of this consequence without Vladimir Putin knowing about it,” one of his top advisers, Ben Rhodes, said earlier Thursday.

Meanwhile, US president-elect Donald Trump on Thursday again rejected the CIA’s conclusion that Russia manipulated the US election, as the hacking scandal expanded into a hefty foreign policy challenge just five weeks before he takes office.

Even as NBC News reported that US intelligence has concluded that Russian President Putin had a direct hand in the hacking plot, Trump took to Twitter to dismiss the issue, which has been roiling since before he defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton on November 8.

“If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House waite [sic] so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?” he tweeted.

But the 70-year-old billionaire-turned-president-elect appeared increasingly isolated in his stance as the scandal posed a deep challenge to his aim of resetting Washington’s strained relations with Moscow.

The conclusions by key intelligence bodies including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been accepted throughout the government, including among top members of Trump’s Republican Party.

On Wednesday, senior Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he was informed by the FBI in August that his own campaign had been hacked.

“My goal is to put on President Trump’s desk crippling sanctions against Russia. They need to pay a price,” he said.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden called Trump “the only prominent American that has not yet conceded that the Russians conducted a massive covert influence campaign against the United States.”

“On this particular event, what Mr Trump says about it is the same thing that Mr Putin says about it,” he told CNN Wednesday. – AFP.