RT is now a main unit of Russian intelligence apparatus, US and allies say

The State Department on Friday said Russia’s state-owned RT news agency has expanded operations to become a sophisticated, mainstay arm of the Kremlin’s military intelligence nexus, and helped deploy a covert fundraising operation for body armor, radios, rifles and other military equipment for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Canada and the United Kingdom joined the U.S. in its accusations, claiming that Russian spin doctors have set their sites around the world, targeting populations in U.S.-allied countries and nations in Africa.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that RT secretly runs several covert influence fronts, including “African Stream,” a YouTube channel, and “Red,” an English-language platform based in Berlin.

“They are engaged in covert influence activities aimed at undermining American elections and democracies, functioning like a de facto arm of Russia's intelligence apparatus,” Blinken said in a State Department press conference, urging allies to treat RT’s activities similar to those of other intelligence activities conducted by Russia.  

RT apparently pieced together a crowdfunding network that involved directing funds for armaments that would be deployed to Russian units on the ground in Ukraine. A specialized Kremin cyber operations unit was also tucked into RT in the spring of last year, Blinken said. 

“We know that RT possessed cyber capabilities and engaged in covert information influence operations and military procurement as part of RT’s expanded capabilities,” he added.

“We’ve been broadcasting straight out of the KGB headquarters all this time,” an RT spokesperson sarcastically wrote in a statement to Nextgov/FCW. “No, but seriously, we’re running out of popcorn to sit and watch what the US government will come up with next, about us.”

The spokesperson also directed Nextgov/FCW to a parody video on RT’s site that satirically uncovers how RT is tied to the Kremlin. 

“In this 2015 video, created to celebrate the channel’s first ten years on air, RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan oversees the unloading of trucks full of cash from the Kremlin, handcuffs RT’s hosts to their desks and brings a McDonald’s Happy Meal to expat journalists held hostage in the basement,” a video description reads.

Simonyan was allegedly in direct coordination with the Kremlin to manipulate Moldova’s election outcome in favor of a pro-Russian candidate last October, the Department of State said. Last week, she appeared to admit on Russian television that RT was operating on behalf of the Kremlin.

U.S. diplomats are working with allied nations in a manner akin to how Western intelligence groups collaborated to jettison Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, when officials were concerned that sensitive data and intelligence could be covertly sent back to China, said James Rubin, who helps lead State’s Global Engagement Center. 

“One of the reasons … why so much of the world has not been as fully supportive of Ukraine as you would think they would be — given that Russia has invaded Ukraine and violated rule number one of the international system — is because of the broad scope and reach of RT, where propaganda, disinformation and lies are spread to millions, if not billions, of people around the world,” said Rubin.

It’s not entirely clear how the State Department or other partners were able to fully source and determine RT’s linkages to Moscow intelligence, nor how the covert collective expanded worldwide. Last week, the U.S. rolled out sweeping legal accusations and sanctions against RT for running an operation to influence November’s presidential election, and the legal filings included verbatim texts and communications between RT staff involved in the influence efforts.

The Justice Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment about what surveillance authorities or methods were used to acquire the contents of the text messages. The NSA, which specializes in signals intelligence and has often been tapped to intercept in-transit communications of foreign targets abroad, declined to comment.

The announcement is part of a broader move to push back against what officials call a pervasive Russian campaign to meddle in democratic affairs in the U.S. and allies abroad, especially as Americans prepare to vote in a decisive November presidential election.

The U.S. intelligence community in July assessed that Russia has not changed its political interests from previous elections, where its efforts largely benefitted the Donald Trump campaigns. Russia’s war in Ukraine has become a flash point among some Republican lawmakers who have used the Biden administration’s hefty financial support for Ukrainian armaments as leverage to bash what they call neglectful White House border policies.

Last week, an official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence doubled down on the intelligence community’s findings, saying that RT and other Russia-affiliated actors are “supporting Moscow’s efforts to influence voter preferences in favor of the former president and diminish the prospects of the vice president.” 

Ukrainian ties to the Trump administration were muddled in the lead-up to his first impeachment after he withheld congressionally authorized military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to coerce its leaders into handing over politically damaging information about President Joe Biden.

The Trump presidency in 2017 became the center of election security controversy when the Justice Department launched an investigation into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election. Special Counsel Robert Mueller later determined Trump and his allies had encouraged the hack but that there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against the former president.

Election interference is back on the table again after the intelligence community confirmed last month that Iranian hackers breached Trump’s campaign. Criminal charges against individuals tied to the Iranian efforts are expected soon, the Washington Post reported Thursday.