US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has accused RT and its parent company of acting as an extension of Russian intelligence and attempting to undermine democracy around the world.
Speaking at a State Department press conference on Friday, Blinken announced sanctions designations against RT's parent company TV-Novosti and the company Rossiya Segodnya, accusing “individuals affiliated” and “elements within” them of allegedly attempting to interfere in the Moldovan elections.
The State Department has also sanctioned Dmitry Kiselev, Rossiya Segodnya’s director-general.
TV-Novosti was also accused of “being responsible for or complicit in, or having directly or indirectly engaged or attempted to engage in, interference” in US or other foreign elections “for or on behalf of, or for the benefit of, directly or indirectly,” the Russian government.
RT is “engaged in covert influence activities… functioning as a de facto arm of [Russian] intelligence,” Blinken told reporters.
Blinken revealed that the US, UK, and Canada plan to launch a global effort to treat RT’s activities as espionage, and hope to attract all of their “allies and partners” to the endeavor.
James O’Brien, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, called RT a “threat to democracy and accurate information.”
According to the State Department, RT has “moved beyond being simply a media outlet and has been an entity with cyber capabilities,” which is “also engaged in information operations, covert influence, and military procurement.”
The US government claimed that “an entity with cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence” has been embedded within RT since the spring of 2023 and that RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan and her deputy Anton Anisimov had “direct, witting knowledge of this enterprise.”
Another accusation leveled against RT was that Anisimov has operated a crowdfunding platform “providing material support and weaponry to Russia’s military units in Ukraine.”
The State Department claimed that RT has funded “proxy outlets” that engaged in “covert influence activity” around the world, alleging that this has happened in Africa, Germany, France, and Argentina.
The head of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), James Rubin, told reporters on Friday that the “broad scope and reach” of RT was one of the reasons many countries around the world did not support Ukraine. The GEC has funded propaganda games aimed at children and forced Twitter to censor pro-Russian content. Rubin admitted last year that he wanted to use the GEC to shut down Russian media outlets around the world.
“We are going to be talking… in Latin America, Africa and Asia… to try to show all of those countries that right now broadcast – with no restrictions or control – RT and allow them free access to their countries,” Rubin said, arguing that RT’s presence has “had a deleterious effect on the views of the rest of the world about a war that should be an open and shut case.”
The State Department’s announcement was leaked to CNN earlier in the day. When reached for comment by the US outlet, RT’s press office sarcastically replied: “We’ve been broadcasting straight out of the KGB headquarters all this time,” adding, “We’re running out of popcorn to sit and watch what the US government will come up with next about us.”