The Kremlin has said it will take retaliatory action against American news outlets after the US charged Russian media executives and state broadcaster RT with attempting to influence the 2024 presidential elections.
The US Treasury and State departments also announced actions targeting RT, including the network’s top editor, Margarita Simonyan and her deputy Elizaveta Brodskaia, officials said.
Simonyan was a ‘central figure in Russian government malign influence efforts,’ the Treasury Department said, while Brodskaia ‘reported to Russian President Putin and other government officials.’
US officials said Russia‘s goal was to exacerbate US political divisions and weaken public support for American aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Russia’s foreign ministry said 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.
Russian President Vladimir Putin pictured with editor-in-chief of RT broadcaster Margarita Simonyan in December 2022. Simonyan is one of the 10 individuals and two entities sanctioned by the Treasury Department
US Attorney General Merrick Garland said the US would be relentless in their efforts to counter and disrupt attempts by Russia interfering in the elections
‘When the authorities resort to such primitive ways of influencing their voters, this is the decline of ‘liberal democracies’,’ Maria Zakharova, foreign ministry spokeswoman, said in a statement on the U.S. action.
‘There will be a response,’ Zakharova said.
‘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.’
US Attorney General Merrick Garland also announced the seizure of 32 internet domains that were part of an alleged campaign ‘to secure Russia’s preferred outcome,’ which officials have said would be Donald Trump winning the November vote.
‘We have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic system of government,’ Garland said at a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force.
‘We will be relentlessly aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by Russia and Iran – as well as China or any other foreign malign actor – to interfere in our elections,’ he said.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said RT was aiming to ‘covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests and influencing voters here in the US and in foreign elections as well.’
Garland said the seized internet domains were used by the Russian government ‘to engage in a covert campaign to interfere and influence the outcome of our country’s elections.’
He said the influence campaign involved members of Putin’s ‘inner circle’ and the Kremlin’s goal, according to an internal planning document, ‘is to secure Russia’s preferred outcome in the election.’
The attorney general declined to specify what that outcome was but US intelligence officials suggested in July that the Kremlin once again favors Trump over his Democratic opponents, as it did in the 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections.
The France-based Reporters Without Borders ranks Russia at 162 out of 180 countries in monitors on press freedom and ranks the United States at 55.
Russian officials say Western media groups give indulgent coverage of Ukraine, biased coverage of the war and excessively negative coverage of Russia. Western media groups say they try to give balanced coverage.
RT responded with ridicule to the US charges.
‘Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and RT’s interference in the US elections,’ the media outlet told Reuters. RT ceased operating in the United States 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.
Garland also said two Russia-based RT employees – Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, 31, and Elena Afanasyeva, 27, have been indicted in New York for money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
They are accused of funneling $10 million to a Tennessee-based company that used social media influencers ‘to create and distribute content to US audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,’ Garland said.
The US firm, which was not identified, published English-language videos on multiple social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube, according to the indictment.
‘The company never disclosed to the influencers – or to their millions of followers – its ties to RT and the Russian government,’ Garland said.
The Kremlin in June dismissed as absurd US intelligence assertions that Russia was seeking to meddle in the presidential election and has said that US spies were intent on casting Russia as an enemy.
But US officials have repeatedly warned of efforts by foreign powers to meddle in the upcoming US election, and Washington has accused Moscow of seeking to influence US elections dating back to the 2016 contest between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, in an appearance before a Senate committee in May, singled out Russia, China and Iran as the worst offenders.
‘Specifically, Russia remains the most active foreign threat to our elections,’ Haines said.