On a Sunday panel show, a Russian politician said U.S. “intelligence missed it when Russian intelligence stole the president of the United States.”

Vyacheslav Nikonov, a member of the Russian parliamentary body, the Duma, made the remarks on the panel show “Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov.”

The focus of the episode was the decline of U.S. power in the world. In that context, said University of Virginia professor Allen Lynch via email, Nikonov was less stating the extent of Russia's involvement in the 2016 election, and more mocking the resulting chaos as emblematic of U.S. weakness.

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“His point in making the remark was that if the U.S. can’t protect the integrity of its own electoral system, then how powerful can it really be?” wrote Lynch.

Though the U.S. intelligence community has unequivocally stated that Russian intelligence agencies hacked the Democratic National Committee and other political targets during the 2016 presidential campaign, Russian President Vladimir Putin has roundly denied the claim.

Nikonov’s statement was first noticed by Julia Davis, who operates the heavily critical Russian media monitoring site “Russia Lies.”