Washington: Hillary Clinton has said Russian cyber attacks intended to influence the presidential election were partially to blame for her loss to Donald Trump, while President Barack Obama has vowed the US will respond to the interference.

At a fund-raising event in New York, Mrs Clinton, speaking publicly for the first time about the hacking, said that the Russians had sought to "undermine our democracy" through the cyber attacks, which she believed were a result of Russian President Vladimir Putin's "personal beef" against her.

"Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people, and that is the direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election," the Democrat said, according to a recording of the event on Thursday night, US time, obtained by the New York Times.

She also said FBI director James Comey's October 28 letter disclosing a new investigation of emails from her time as secretary of state damaged her with swing-state voters days before the election. The two factors were "unprecedented", Mrs Clinton said.