‘Guerrilla projects’: Russia revels in US allegations of media warfare

Last week, the United States Department of Justice unsealed an indictment accusing a Tennessee-based company, believed to be Tenet Media, of accepting millions of dollars from the Russian state-owned media outlet RT and promoting “pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation across social media to US audiences”.

Tenet was responsible for high-profile right-wing influencers, including Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern and Tim Pool.

“Ukraine is the enemy of this country,” Pool angrily declared on his YouTube blog in August to his 1.3 million subscribers.

“Ukraine is our enemy, being funded by the Democrats … Ukraine is the greatest threat to this nation and to the world. We should rescind all funding and financing, pull out all military support, and we should apologise to Russia.”

Although politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties have approved defence spending for Ukraine amid the ongoing war with Russia, a vocal Republican faction centred around presidential candidate Donald Trump is calling to either scale down or halt aid entirely, which would advantage Russia in the conflict.

Pool, along with Rubin and others, denied being a willing accomplice.

“Never at any point did anyone other than I have full editorial control of the show and the contents of the show are often apolitical,” he wrote on X on September 5.

As well as federal indictments, the US Treasury slapped RT, whose employees are accused of funnelling cash to Tenet, with sanctions.

Separately, the Russian-born former Trump adviser and conservative pundit, Dimitri Simes, was indicted for allegedly working on behalf of another sanctioned Russian broadcaster, Channel One.

In Russia, news of the sanctions and indictments were framed as another front of informational warfare.

Russian TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov, centre, talks to service members before a ceremony inaugurating Vladimir Putin as president of Russia at the Kremlin in Moscow, May 7, 2024 [Sergei Savostyanov/Sputnik/Pool via Reuters]

“Dimitri Simes is not just a political scientist, but someone who frequently and personally communicated with Trump, as well as his team,” TV host Vladimir Solovyov explained on his talk show.

“They’ll say that through Simes, Trump is a Russian agent and this proves that how the Russians, through Simes, are attempting to influence Trump … I believe they’re mounting another line of attack against Donald Trump by charging Dimitri Simes.”

Solovyov said Moscow should offer asylum to those indicted for conspiring with Russian state media.

As Putin said, he added, “we don’t extradite freedom fighters”, referring to the Russian president’s statement on providing a safe harbour to American whistleblower Edward Snowden.

“I’m waiting for when they try to drag in Tucker Carlson,” said Solovyov, of the US conservative pundit who interviewed Putin in February in Russia.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a close Putin ally, praised RT’s chief editor Margarita Simonyan.

Simonyan goads the West

For her part, Simonyan took the allegations against her in her stride.

She doubled down and openly accepted responsibility for waging informational warfare on the US.

“I am the head of a Russian state media outlet that is funded by the government,” she proclaimed. “I am proud that I work for my country! Write it down: all RT employees and its editor-in-chief follow only the orders from the Kremlin. Any other orders are being used as toilet paper.”

On Solovyov’s show, without confirming or denying any specifics, Simonyan appeared to hint at covert attempts to influence the media landscape in the US.

“When the [invasion of Ukraine] started, everyone knows that our ability to work normally was shut down in all countries that support Ukraine. First of all, in the United States and in Europe, our broadcasting was stopped, our licences have been revoked, you couldn’t transfer money, you couldn’t work there,” she said.

The European Union banned RT days after Russia invaded Ukraine, with the United Kingdom following soon after. RT America also closed soon after the war began.

“In these countries, including the United States, we started to work undercover,” said Simonyan. “We organised a number of guerrilla projects. I won’t say whether these are the projects of which the United States is currently accusing us, or perhaps different projects – I won’t say anything, don’t know anything. I won’t testify about it under oath and I won’t report it to anyone except our supreme commander-in-chief, and he didn’t ask me these questions.”

She described the mysterious projects as “incredibly successful”. She also claimed, without providing evidence, that they received “nearly 14 billion views” and outperformed outlets, including the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera’s English-language service.

‘The Kremlin identified a more vulnerable and emotionally charged audience’

According to analysts, the episode exemplifies how Russia is able to influence Americans who are distrustful of the state and mainstream media.

“Russian foreign propaganda cannot work without pre-existing Western prejudices,” said Seva Gunitsky, associate professor of Russian politics at the University of Toronto.

“The Kremlin’s goal is less about promoting a specific ideological agenda and more about destabilising its adversaries – and it can do that only by amplifying existing divisions, not by creating new narratives.”

He described the focus on right-wing actors as “likely a matter of convenience”.

“It suggests the Kremlin identified a more vulnerable and emotionally charged audience in this demographic, especially in relation to issues dear to Russian President Vladimir Putin like anti-wokeism and anti-globalism, which already resonate strongly within American right-wing circles.”

Russian historian and political theorist Ilya Budraitskis, a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, told Al Jazeera that the “almost verbatim” repetition of Kremlin narratives on the war in Ukraine by US bloggers and so-called alternative media is an “obvious fact”.

“At the same time, the success of spreading such narratives is connected with deeper processes in American society – the distrust of political institutions, mainstream media, political elites, and so on,” he said. “The Kremlin certainly uses this in its own interests, but it is not the source of these problems. Although, I am ready to believe that they paid someone money.”