US charges employees of Russia’s state media network in crackdown on election influence efforts

The criminal indictment charged the two RT employees, Konstantin Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, with conspiracy to violate US money laundering and foreign agent laws. Both are based in Russia and remain at large.

The Tennessee company produced nearly 2,000 videos on topics like immigration and inflation that have been viewed 16 million times on YouTube since last November, according to the Justice Department.

In one instance, Afanasyeva told the company to provide a video that blamed Ukraine and the United States for a terrorist attack on a Moscow music venue, the Justice Department said.

The indictment does not name the Tennessee company or charge any of its executives with wrongdoing. However, it alleges that the company failed to disclose that it was funded by RT and its executives never registered with the Justice Department that they were acting as agents of a foreign government.

The Justice Department has previously warned that Russia remains a threat in the election and appears to be favouring Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris.

US intelligence assessments found that Moscow tried to help Trump in 2016 when he defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton, and in 2020 when he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Moscow has denied the allegations.

On social media, Trump repeated his accusation that the Justice Department is working to defeat him in the election.

Justice Department officials say Russian President Vladimir Putin and his proxies have adopted increasingly sophisticated techniques, targeting specific groups of voters and those in battleground states, and are now using bot farms and artificial intelligence.

The FBI last month searched the homes of two Americans with ties to Russian state media, including former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter and Dimitri Simes, an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign.

The US government has also accused Iran of attempting to influence the upcoming election through cyber operations against both the Trump and Harris campaigns. The Trump campaign has said Iran was behind the leak of internal campaign documents to US media outlets.