Russia vows action over RT charges

ELECTION MEDDLING?
Washington accused the media firm of paying a US firm to create videos pushing Moscow’s agenda, but the creators said they were tricked

Russia yesterday said that it would take retaliatory measures against US media in response to US charges against Russian media executives and state broadcaster RT, which Washington has accused of trying to influence November’s presidential election.

The US on Wednesday filed money-laundering charges against two employees of RT for what officials said was a scheme to hire a US company to produce online content to influence the election.

The US Department of the Treasury and Department of State also announced actions targeting RT, including the network’s top editor, Margarita Simonyan.

Photo: AFP

US officials said that Russia’s goal was to exacerbate US political divisions and weaken public support for aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia.

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the US moves were part of a plan to purge any dissenting voices from the global media landscape and to stoke fears among US voters about Russia as a mythical external enemy.

“When the authorities resort to such primitive ways of influencing their voters, this is the decline of ‘liberal democracies,’” ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement. “There will be a response.”

“We warn that attempts to expel Russian journalists from the territory of the United States, create unacceptable conditions for their work or any other forms of obstruction of their activities, including with the use of visa tools, will become the basis for taking symmetrical and/or asymmetric retaliatory measures against the American media,” she said.

RT responded with ridicule to the US charges.

“Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and RT’s interference in the US elections,” it told reporters.

RT ceased operating in the US after major television distributors dropped it following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Simonyan said the charges were an attempt to drown RT as a competitor.

In Washington on Wednesday, US Attorney General Merrick Garland outlined the US’ stance.

“The justice department’s message is clear: We will have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic systems of government,” Garland said.

One criminal case disclosed by the US Department of Justice accuses two employees of RT of covertly funding a Tennessee-based content creation company with nearly US$10 million to publish English-language videos on social media platforms, including TikTok and YouTube, with messages in favor of the Russian government’s interests.

The nearly 2,000 videos posted by the company had more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, prosecutors said.

The two defendants, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, were charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and contravening the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

They are at large. It was not immediately clear if they had lawyers.

The justice department said the company did not disclose that it was funded by RT and that neither it nor its founders registered as required by law as an agent of a foreign principal.

Although the indictment does not name the company, it describes it as a Tennessee-based content creation firm with six commentators and a Web site identifying itself as “a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.”

That description exactly matches Tenet Media, an online company that hosts videos made by Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and others.

Johnson and Pool both responded with posts on X, calling themselves “victims.”

Calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “scumbag,” Pool wrote that “should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived.”

Johnson wrote that he had been asked a year ago to provide content to a “media startup.”

He said his lawyers negotiated a “standard, arms length deal, which was later terminated.”

Groups linked to the Kremlin are hiring marketing and communications firms within Russia to outsource some of the work of creating digital propaganda while also covering their tracks, US officials told a news conference.

The goal is to get Americans to spread Russian disinformation without questioning its origin, they said.

People are far more likely to trust and repost information that they believe is coming from a domestic source, they added.