Russia

The Daily Beast reports: This week’s Department of Justice indictments of the employees of RT, Russia’s premiere state-controlled propaganda outlet, have been met with mockery and jeering in Moscow. Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief, posted a bevy of messages on her Telegram channel—and none of them sounded like denials. In one of her first reactions on Telegram, Simonyan mocked the authorities …

The Washington Post reports: YouTube took down several right-wing politics channels that had been linked with allegations from the Justice Department that Russian government employees were paying right-wing influencers in the United States to produce content. The Google-owned video site “terminated” Tenet Media and four other channels run by right-wing media entrepreneur Lauren Chen [photo] as part of the company’s …

“So disinformation is something totally different from what they are going after and describing. Disinformation is when you make up things that aren’t true and you spread it people think they’re true. “In this particular case, we are talking about pre-existing political opinions in the United States. These are pre-existing political opinions that have existed well before any Russian engagement …

Semafor reports: A conservative American media company has fired one of the YouTubers implicated in an alleged Russian influence operation exposed by the US Department of Justice this week. “Lauren Chen was an independent contractor, whose contract has been terminated,” Blaze Media CEO Tyler Cardon said in an email to Semafor. Chen and her husband, Liam Donovan, are the co-founders …

Posted by Benny Johnson: A year ago, a media startup pitched my company to provide content as an independent contractor. Our lawyers negotiated a standard, arms length deal, which was later terminated. We are disturbed by the allegations in today’s indictment, which make clear that myself and other influencers were victims in this alleged scheme. My lawyers will handle anyone …

CNN reports: The Biden administration on Wednesday plans to accuse Russia of a sustained effort to influence the 2024 US elections by using Kremlin-run media and other online platforms to target US voters with disinformation, six sources familiar with the matter told CNN. It’s expected the US will make a series of moves on Wednesday aimed at addressing the Kremlin’s …

The New York Times reports: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was warmly received by the leader of Mongolia on Tuesday in his first state visit to a member nation of the International Criminal Court since it issued a warrant for his arrest last year. Instead of arresting Mr. Putin, as the I.C.C., Ukraine, and human rights groups have urged, …

CNN reports: Pavel Durov is a lot of things to a lot of people. Programming prodigy. Billionaire entrepreneur. Kremlin stooge. Free-speech fighter. Biological father to at least 100 kids. Durov, the elusive founder of Telegram who was detained in France over the weekend, cuts the figure of a mysterious, globe-trotting tech bro with Mark Zuckerberg’s prodigiousness, Jack Dorsey’s bizarre lifestyle …

The Guardian reports: FBI agents have raided and searched the Virginia home of Dimitri Simes, an author and policy analyst, who advised Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign and who currently hosts a current affairs program on Russia’s state-run Channel One. Simes, whose name was included more than 100 times in the 2019 Mueller report into Russian interference in the …

The Telegraph reports: Ali Al-Shakati has never existed, we now know, but that didn’t stop an obscure, Russian-linked fake news outlet from naming him as a 17-year-old supposedly Muslim asylum seeker responsible for the murder of three schoolgirls in the town on Monday. Channel3 Now, a website that masquerades as a legitimate American news outlet but acts as an “aggregator” …

Reuters reports: U.S. foes targeting November’s election with influence operations are expected to adapt to presidential contest developments, a U.S. intelligence official said on Monday, in an apparent reference to Joe Biden dropping his reelection bid. The official said unidentified foreign actors were especially focused on “events that occurred this month regarding the presidential race”, without referring directly to President …

Reuters reports: Russia is ready to work with any U.S. leader willing to engage in “equitable, mutually respectful dialogue,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday, while welcoming the stance on Ukraine of Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. Vance, chosen this week by Donald Trump as his running mate, wants to cut American military support for Ukraine in its …

Reuters reports: The Kremlin said on Sunday it did not believe the U.S. administration was responsible for Saturday’s assassination attempt on U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, but accused it of creating an atmosphere that provoked the attack. “We do not believe that the attempt to eliminate and assassinate Trump was organised by the current authorities,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told …

NBC News reports: Russia’s efforts to influence this year’s U.S. election through information warfare have the same aim as in previous elections — to undermine President Joe Biden’s campaign and the Democratic Party and weaken public confidence in the electoral process, intelligence officials said Tuesday. Russia’s election influence operations, which include covert social media accounts and encrypted direct messaging channels, …

NBC News reports: The Justice Department said Tuesday it had uncovered and dismantled a Russian propaganda network with nearly 1,000 accounts pushing pro-Russia posts on the social media platform X. The accounts on X posed as Americans, including a bitcoin investor in Minneapolis, but in reality they were masks for Russian operatives who had the approval and financial support of …

The Daily Beast reports: Ahead of the first big showdown between Donald Trump and Joe Biden at the debate this week, the Trump campaign’s attacks on Biden are getting a big boost from the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. A pool reporter for Putin and several popular pro-Kremlin outlets claimed on Thursday that the “top news” for the week included, among other …

The Associated Press reports: The trial of a Russian American dual citizen whom Russia accuses of treason opened on Thursday as tensions rise between Washington and Moscow, including over the arrests of two American journalists. The trial is being held behind closed doors in Yekaterinburg, in the same court that next week is to begin hearing the case of Evan …

The New York Times reports: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, revived a Cold War-era mutual defense pledge between their nations on Wednesday by signing a new agreement that obligated them to assist each other in the event of “aggression” against either country. The Russian president, in a briefing after the two leaders signed …

“Well, it’s obvious, number one, that the Biden administration have zero diplomacy skills. There should have been a summit with Vladimir Putin, you know, right after this thing started. “They had a done deal, we all know that, but we talked to them, ‘Hey, we’ll give you whatever it takes we’re gonna give you, you’re gonna be able to fight …

The Washington Post reports: When an associate of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies launched a pro-Kremlin media outlet here in May 2023, Czech counterintelligence officers began keeping careful watch. For nearly a year, European intelligence officials said, the Czech authorities secretly recorded hours of meetings between several far-right politicians from across Europe and the associate, Artem Marchevsky, …