Russian President Vladimir Putin said he did not know who was behind the hacking of US Democratic Party organisations but the information uncovered was important, Bloomberg news agency reports.
In an interview two days before a G20 meeting in China with US President Barack Obama and other world leaders, Putin said it might be impossible to establish who engineered the release of sensitive Democratic Party emails but it was not done by the Russian government.
"Does it even matter who hacked this data?" Putin said. "The important thing is the content that was given to the public."
"There's no need to distract the public's attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it," he added.
"But I want to tell you again, I don't know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has never done this."
The hacked emails, released by activist group WikiLeaks in July, appeared to show favouritism within the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and prompted the resignation of the body's chairwoman.
A computer network used by Clinton's campaign, and the party's fundraising committee for the US House of Representatives were also hacked.
Clinton, who polls show as leading Donald Trump in the campaign for the US presidential election in November, has said Russian intelligence services conducted a cyber attack against her party. Some officials have suggested Moscow is trying to influence the US election.
Putin dismissed the allegations. "We have never interfered, are not interfering and do not intend to interfere in domestic politics," he said.
"We will carefully watch what happens and wait for the election results. Then we are ready to work with any American administration, if they want to themselves."
Relations between Russia and United States hit a post-Cold War low in 2014 over the Ukraine crisis, and Washington and Moscow have since clashed over diverging policies in Syria.
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