US announces series of measures to combat Russian interference before election

Two months before the presidential election, the American government is redoubling its efforts to neutralize Russian disinformation operations on its territory. Operations that are much more sophisticated than in 2016, richly resourced and reaching back to the Kremlin, according to official documents.

Sanctions, seizure of online domains, indictments, but above all detailed communication to counter this enterprise: On Wednesday, September 4, the American authorities outlined the contours of the online war. largely clandestine, which Russia is said to have declared, to influence foreign public opinion.

Two Russian nationals, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov, 31, and Elena Afanasieva, 27, have been charged in New York with conspiracy to launder money and violating the foreign agents legislation. According to the justice system, which has their communications, these two employees of the RT channel – a propaganda tool for the regime abroad – organized from Moscow, using pseudonyms and shell companies, a clever financing circuit, to the tune of ten million dollars, to broadcast content in the United States.

To do this, they concluded an agreement with a platform based in Tennessee, which received regular transfers (thirty in total, between October 2023 and August 2024), notably from the United Arab Emirates and Turkey.

Playing the victim

According to the summary of the case released by the Justice Department, this company has distributed nearly 2,000 videos, starting in November 2023, on all available media (TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube). On YouTube, they have collected 16 million views. These videos concerned, it is indicated, many subjects related to American current events (inflation, immigration) and foreign policy.

“If the views expressed in these videos are not uniform, note the summary, Most of them fit into the publicly stated goals of the Russian government and RT – to amplify internal divisions in the United States. After the attack at a shopping mall near Moscow in March, one of the two employees asked one of the company’s founders to blame Ukraine and the United States for the attack.

The Tennessee company in question is not named in the indictment, but it is Tenet Media, founded by Lauren Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan. Tenet Media describes itself on its website as “a network of heterodox commentators who focus on Western cultural and political issues”He wanted to bring together under one roof stars of the extreme right, such as Tim Pool, presenter of the podcast “The Culture War”, or Benny Johnson, host of the “Benny Show”.

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