US President Donald Trump on Saturday accused the New York Times of “a virtual act of treason” after it reported the US is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid.

Current and former government officials have described the classified deployment of American computer code inside Russia’s power grid and other targets, the newspaper reported.

The action is intended partly as a warning but also to leave the US poised to conduct cyber-strikes in the event of a major conflict between the US and Russia, the newspaper said.

Trump tweeted that the accusations were “not true”, calling the media “corrupt” and repeating accusations that journalists are “the enemy of the people”.