Russians Reacts After US Exposes Pro-Kremlin Influencer Network

Russia has vowed to retaliate against Washington sanctions against key figures at the Kremlin-funded RT news network.

The U.S. Treasury and State Departments said on Wednesday that money-laundering charges had been filed against RT employees for a scheme to task an American company to produce online content to sway November’s presidential election. Newsweek has contacted RT for comment.

Without knowing about Russian involvement in the $10-million campaign, U.S.-based influencers and personalities were recruited. Washington officials said Moscow had intended to stoke U.S. political divisions and weaken public support for American aid to Ukraine in the war Vladimir Putin started.

Kremlin propagandists have stated a preference for Donald Trump to win in November, partly due to his call to end further aid for Ukraine. His links with Putin were also under scrutiny during his time in the White House.

However, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the U.S. of removing dissenting voices from the media landscape in a statement on Thursday. She said that, “when the authorities resort to such primitive ways of influencing their voters, this is the decline of ‘liberal democracies.'”

“There will be a response,” Zakharova added.

An indictment said Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, 31, and Elena Afanasyeva, 27, had directed an unnamed Tennessee-based company to spread Kremlin propaganda and erode support for Ukraine. They are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Among the 10 individuals and two entities sanctioned by the U.S. are RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan—a mainstay of state television propaganda TV programs where she pushes the Kremlin line on Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and rails against the West.

Since Putin’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, RT was sanctioned, dropped by distributors, and forced to cease formal operations in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and the EU.

The indictment says that, in the words of Simonyan, RT created an “entire empire of covert projects” designed to shape public opinion in “Western audiences.”

In a Telegram post, Simonyan gave her reaction, writing, “there’s one thing I don’t understand: if they kick us out completely, how will they hold the next elections?

“They don’t have any other scenarios except to drown the competitor,” she wrote: “I’m pleased, of course, but let’s say we completely leave there—then what?

“They’ll cancel the next elections,” Simonyan added, “or we won’t leave.”

In a follow-up post, she shared a letter of support from Nicaragua’s vice president Rosario Murillo. It said the issuing of sanctions “is nothing more than another recognition of your merits” and that the channel she heads were the victims of “the champions of oppression and censorship.”

U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials have said that Putin had authorized influence operations to help Trump in 202, while his 2016 campaign benefited from hacking by Russian intelligence officers and a covert social-media effort.