WASHINGTON — The United States on Wednesday announced a broad effort to push back on Russian influence campaigns in the 2024 election, trying to curb the Kremlin’s use of state-run media and fake news sites to sway American voters.
The actions include sanctions, indictments, and seizing of web domains that US officials say the Kremlin uses to spread propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine, which Russia invaded more than two years ago.
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday announced actions by the Justice Department, including the indictment of two Russian employees of RT, the state-owned broadcaster, who used a company in Tennessee to spread content, and the takedown of a Russian malign influence campaign known as Doppelganger.
“The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power engages in political activities or seeks to influence public discourse,” Garland said.
The Treasury Department sanctioned ANO Dialog, a Russian nonprofit that helps run the Doppelganger network, as well as the editor-in-chief of RT, Margarita S. Simonyan, and her deputies.
The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information pertaining to foreign interference in a US election and sanctioned five Russian state-funded news outlets, including RT, Ruptly, and Sputnik.
US officials have been stepping up their warnings about Russian election influence efforts. US spy agencies have assessed that the Kremlin favors former President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in the November contest, seeing him as more skeptical of US support for Ukraine.
Garland said the charges announced Wednesday were not the end of the case: “The investigation is ongoing.”
The Justice Department and the FBI have also been investigating a handful of Americans accused of knowingly spreading false Kremlin narratives. But officials have emphasized they are not aiming to curb free speech. Americans who merely repeat or spread stories they see on Russian state media are not being investigated as part of the efforts, officials said.
The United States has said that Russian intelligence agencies have been using RT, the state-owned broadcaster, to spread disinformation through bots and other efforts. US officials have been looking more closely at how the Kremlin and its spy agencies use RT to influence the election.
The indictment Wednesday charged two Russian employees of RT, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. They are accused of spending $10 million to secretly pay the unnamed Tennessee company to spread nearly 2,000 English-language videos on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and X. The videos, most of which support the goals of the Russian government, have gained 16 million views on YouTube, according to the Justice Department.
Garland said the videos were “often consistent with Russia’s interest in amplifying US domestic divisions in order to weaken US opposition to core Russian interests, particularly its ongoing war in Ukraine.” The company, he said, never disclosed its ties to the Russian government.
After a terrorist attack on a concert venue in Moscow in March, Afanasyeva directed the Tennessee company to focus on the false narrative that Ukraine was responsible, a critical propaganda push by the Kremlin.
The United States was caught flat-footed in 2016 as its spy agencies learned about Russian efforts to influence the vote on behalf of Trump and were late in warning the public. In subsequent elections, US intelligence officials were more aggressive at quickly calling out Russian, Chinese, and Iranian efforts to influence US elections.
Officials say that fighting election interference has been more difficult this year. Some Americans, particularly Trump’s supporters, see accusations that Russia is spreading disinformation as efforts to undermine their views and policy positions.
The United States has already taken action against Russian organizations it believes are trying to influence US politics. In March, the Treasury Department sanctioned a Russian group that has aided efforts to create fake news sites that spread misinformation, and in July it seized two internet domains that it also linked to RT and the Federal Security Service, a successor of the Soviet KGB.
The Justice Department action builds on that, saying it was seizing 32 more domains that were used to covertly spread Russian propaganda. According to the government affidavit, the Doppelganger campaign is run by Sergei Kiriyenko, a former prime minister who is now Russian President Vladimir Putin’s first deputy chief of staff.
Wray said the fake news sites had been seized by the government as of noon.
Kiriyenko, according to court papers, had directed the malign influence campaign at least since 2022.
Garland said a Russian internal planning document stated that “the aim of the campaign is securing Russia’s preferred outcome in the election.”
The war in Ukraine has made November’s election one of the most pivotal for Putin. While Harris is expected to continue the Biden administration’s vigorous support for Ukraine, Trump has pledged to end the war quickly, forcing the parties into negotiations. His vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, has spoken disparagingly about providing funding for Ukraine.
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