DISINFO: The US and the Collective West have launched a terrorist attack against Russia’s information channels
SUMMARY
Russian journalists have been the target of a real terrorist attack by the United States. What is happening these days to Russian journalists and Russian media structures is an attack that the collective West is launching against them. Meta's decision to censor Russian information channels after the usual complaints of interference in the upcoming elections arrived from the White House, without providing any evidence of this, demonstrates how Meta and other social platforms are strictly dependent on Washington.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin narratives about censorship and control of the media in the West.
Accusations of censorship and attacks against freedom of expression are a recurring pro-Kremlin technique to defend the illicit actions of Russia’s state-sponsored disinformation outlets.
These latest accusations were made by the Kremlin after Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads, announced September 16 that it will block the accounts of RT, Rossiya Segodnya and “other Russian information channels” on its platforms for foreign interference activities.
The US imposed sanctions on Russian state outlet RT on 13 September 2024 under charges that this TV channel was closely linked to Russia’s intelligence and destabilization actions abroad, including procuring military aid to the Russian army in Ukraine, cyber operations, organisation of destabilising protests and other malign efforts in places such as Argentina, France and Moldova. These activities are not compatible with those of a real media organization.
In the previous days, the US Department of Justice had also sanctioned several RT-related individuals and entities that were part of a massive scheme to interfere in the 2024 election in the US in support of one of the candidates perceived as more favourable to the Kremlin’s interests. The affidavit included evidence, such as the arguments and bullet points to be promoted via social media and other channels such as US influencers recruited as agents of influence, attacking the current US administration and promoting its rival party.
Russia Today is not a information outlet. It was the same chief editor of RT (Russia Today), Margarita Simonyan, who talked openly about the nature of the outlet whose output she manages on behalf of the Russian government. In her own words, RT is needed “for about the same reason as why the country needs a Defence Ministry.” RT is capable of “conducting information war against the whole Western world,” using “the information weapon,” Simonyan has explained. According to Simonyan, RT’s strategic aim is to “conquer” and to “grow an audience” in order to make use of access to this audience in “critical moments”.
According to the 2024 World Press Freedom Index, “since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, almost all independent media have been banned, blocked and/or declared “foreign agents” or “undesirable organisations”. All others are subject to military censorship".
More about Russian social media influence can be read here. RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik are the two foreign language flagships of Russia’s campaign to influence international public opinion. Both outlets present themselves as media that provide alternative views to the mainstream in international news reporting. Read our analysis describing three fundamental differences between these outlets and what is normally perceived as independent journalism.
Read similar cases claiming that US a neoliberal totalitarian dictatorship which suppresses all dissent, that RT is targeted because it exposed Ukraine conflict as Western proxy war, that sanctions on Russian media show the US is allergic to freedom of expression.