U.S. Intel Report on Russia Election Meddling Near-Universally Panned

Alexey Kovalev, a Russian journalist who has followed and frequently criticized RT, said he was aghast that the report had given so much attention to the television station. "I do have a beef with RT and their chief," Mr. Kovalev wrote on Twitter, "But they are not your nemesis, America. Please chill."

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Mark Kramer, an expert on the Cold War at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard, said the declassified report had erred by stating that the Russian "influence campaign" directed at the November election marked a "significant escalation" of previous Russian operations. This assessment, he said, "is simply untrue" and reflects a lack of understanding of just how extensive Moscow's meddling has been in the past.

"The reality is that the two main Soviet intelligence and security agencies waged a vigorous campaign for decades to meddle in U.S. politics and discredit the United States," Mr. Kramer said in an email.

Mr. Galeotti, the intelligence expert in Prague, cautioned that this mission to influence foreign politics was not a uniquely Russian phenomenon but had also been embraced in the past by the C.I.A., which, in the 1950s, sought to shape and subvert politics in countries like Iran and Guatemala.