New Kremlin tactics reveal increasing efforts to influence US election

WASHINGTON – Russia has long tried to inject misinformation into the US political discourse. Now it has a new approach: It is paying Americans to do the work.

The indictment this week of two Russian state media employees on charges that they paid a Tennessee company to produce pro-Russian content has renewed concerns about foreign interference in November's election while revealing the Kremlin's latest tactics in a growing information war.

If the allegations prove true, analysts say they would represent a significant escalation and likely only a small part of a larger Russian effort to influence the election.

“We've seen the smoke for years. Now comes the fire,” said Jim Ludes, a former defense analyst who now directs the Pell Center for International Relations at Salve Regina University. “I don't wonder if they'll do this again. I have no doubt.”

Prosecutors say the two employees of RT, a Russian broadcaster formerly known as Russia Today, funneled $10 million to the U.S. media company, which then paid several popular right-wing influencers for their content – in one case $400,000 a month. Two of those influencers said they had no idea their work was backed by Russia.

Intelligence officials and private analysts say Russia's disinformation campaigns are aimed at cutting off American aid to Ukraine, paving the way for a quick Russian victory after more than two years of bitter conflict.

In the presidential election, Russia is supporting Donald Trump because that candidate is seen as the one least supportive of Ukraine, intelligence officials say. Trump has openly praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, proposed cutting funding to Ukraine and repeatedly criticized the NATO military alliance. On Thursday, Putin wryly claimed he was rooting for Vice President Kamala Harris to win.

A secondary goal of Russian disinformation, authorities say, is to increase political polarization and mistrust, thereby undermining Americans' faith in democracy.

This summer, intelligence officials warned that Russia was exploiting unsuspecting Americans to spread its propaganda by tailoring it to existing social debates in the U.S. Rather than creating new conflicts, Russia has succeeded in identifying and exaggerating existing divides and tailoring disinformation accordingly. If Russia succeeds in doing this, it can get Americans to spread its arguments for free, without even knowing the source.

When a train caused massive environmental damage in Ohio last year, Russian voices tried to control the debate with anti-government posts that were quickly shared by American users. Some U.S. websites picked up the Russian propaganda and published it without citing sources.

Earlier this year, Russian state media and networks of fake accounts began spreading claims about immigration on platforms used by Americans.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russian state media claimed without evidence that the virus was the product of American bioweapons experiments and that the US maintained biological laboratories in Ukraine. English-language posts soon appeared on American social media sites.

Four years later, the conspiracy theory still resonates on right-wing extremist message boards.

“What if Covid was created in a biolab in Ukraine and the war was on to keep it secret?” wrote one poster last week on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The company hired by RT was identified as Tenet Media by two of the right-wing content creators it pays – Tim Pool and Benny Johnson. Both men said on social media on Wednesday that they had no knowledge of Tenet's relationship with RT and that if the allegations were true, they were victims.

Pool posted that no one told him what to say on his podcast and condemned Russia: “Putin is a scumbag.”

However, Pool has long held pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian views, as well as conspiracy theories about the Democrats and American democracy.

In a podcast, he claimed that “criminal elements” within the US government were directing the war against Russia and that Ukraine was the real enemy.

“Ukraine is our enemy, it is funded by the Democrats,” Pool said. “Ukraine is the greatest threat to this country and to the world. We should cut all funding, withdraw all military support and apologize to Russia.”

On Truth Social, Trump said the case was an “election interference” effort by federal prosecutors who were “reviving the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax and trying to say that Russia is trying to help him, which is absolutely false,” with the last word in all capital letters.

Trump's comments addressed concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 election, when Kremlin-linked groups used social media and paid ads on Facebook and other platforms to support Trump. Russia also tried to help Trump in the 2020 election.

China and Iran have launched their own campaigns to influence American opinion through social media. Iran secretly supported protests against the war in Gaza and was recently accused of trying to hack into the campaign systems of Trump and his Democratic opponent Harris.

However, according to intelligence officials, the greatest threat remains Russia.

During a briefing with reporters last month, an official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Russia was increasingly trying to cover its tracks by “outsourcing its efforts to commercial firms to conceal its role and laundering narratives through influential U.S. voices.” The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Russian politicians have repeatedly boasted about their ability to influence American opinion despite the efforts of the U.S. government. RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, who has been sanctioned for her ties to the Russian government, detailed how Moscow tries to hide its fingerprints from American intelligence.

“We create a lot of sources of information that are not connected to us,” Simonyan said recently on a Russian talk show. “While the CIA is trying to find out that it is connected to us, it already has a huge audience. So we hunt each other. It's actually fun.”

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Associated Press writer Alan Suderman contributed to this report from Richmond, Virginia.