The employees of the media company Russia Today, Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, were charged with laundering $10 million to sow social divisions in the US, including blaming Ukraine for the ongoing war with Russia.Prosecutors also seized 32 internet domains that they said were used in a Moscow-run effort called “Doppelganger” to undermine international support for Ukraine.
Also read: Trump War Room mocks Harris after Putin ‘endorses her’
Although the indictment did not name the US company the Russians infiltrated, some reports identified it as Tenet Media, which hosts several right-wing, pro-Trump MAGA commentators who, like the former President, take a largely benign view of Russia as opposed to the US establishment’s assessment of Moscow as a malignant player in global politics.
Officials said the US company posted more than 2,000 videos — which got 16 million views on YouTube alone — featuring pro-Trump commentators seeking to promote American isolationism to suit Moscow’s design, blaming Ukraine for the war and often amplifying economic discontent and racial discord within the US. Some of the influencers, who had no knowledge of the infiltration and were allegedly duped into working with the Russians, were paid as much as $ 100,000 per video.
The latest indictment has echoes of the 2016 election when Russia was accused of spreading disinformation and putting its foot or thumb on the election scale to favor Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton. Trump won the Presidency by clinching the electoral college (including 46 electoral votes from three states by a combined, narrow 80,000 vote margin) even through he lost the national popular vote by nearly 3 million.
Many independent commentators fear a repeat scenario: Trump could lose the popular vote to Kamala Harris by as much as 10 million (he lost to Biden by 7 million in 2020) but still get the 270 electoral votes needed with narrow wins in battleground states, powered by Russian manipulation of the MAGA constituency. In the MAGA narrative, Democrats are powered by voting by illegal immigrants.
Moscow meanwhile dismissed the US charges as “nonsense.” Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in fact went so far as to say (sarcastically according to some reports) that he preferred Kamala Harris as President, pushing back at the narrative of the US national security establishment that he wants a pliable Donald Trump in the White House.
“She (Kamala Harris) has such an expressive and infectious laugh that it means she is doing well. And if she is doing well, then … Trump introduced so many restrictions and sanctions against Russia, like no other president had ever introduced before him. And if Ms Harris is doing well, perhaps she will refrain from doing anything like that,” Putin was quoted as saying at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, in remarks some reports said was delivered with a smirk.
Many US analysts see Putin’s remarks as mind games by Moscow because it is thought to prefer Trump, whose disdain for Nato suits Russia. Trump’s former National Security Advisor John Bolton is among those who believes Moscow views Trump as a chump who can be easily manipulated by flattery in order to enable it roll over Ukraine. Trump’s MAGA minions have raged against the US military support for Ukraine.
While Democrats sought to put Trump and his surrogates on the defensive after the new indictment, calling them Russian stooges, some MAGA associates are pushing back at the liberal narrative, saying it is born from Washington’s long association with the country’s military-industrial complex that thrives with unending wars the US keeps walking into.
Among those arguing this line is former Democratic lawmaker turned Trump associate Tulsi Gabbard and the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who are open in their opposition to US involvement in distant wars and are seeking to forge an alternative narrative that sees Russia as a US ally rather than as an adversary. Some analysts though view this as a reflection of the kinship white nationalists feel towards Putin’s Russia, seeing him as a “pious defender of orthodoxy and traditional values” that is being lost in the US to diversity and pluralism.
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