The United States, Canada and Britain on Friday accused Russia’s global television network, RT, of acting as an arm of that country’s intelligence agencies, announcing new sanctions meant to cut off international financing for disinformation operations around the world.
The action came days after the Justice Department indicted two employees of the network for funneling at least $9.7 million to bankroll American podcasters on Tenet Media, a video-streaming site in Tennessee, in hopes of pushing the Kremlin’s propaganda and undermining the American democratic political process.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, appearing at the State Department, said that RT no longer acted simply as a state-owned news organization. Instead, it now actively carries out covert operations not only in the United States, but also in several other countries at the direction of intelligence officials reporting directly to the Kremlin.
“Today, we’re exposing how Russia deploys similar tactics around the world,” Mr. Blinken said. “Russian weaponization of disinformation to subvert and polarize free and open societies extends to every part of the world.”
“We urge every ally, every partner, to start by treating RT’s activities as they do other intelligence activities by Russia within their borders,” he added.
Those operations have included disinformation campaigns, like the one using Tenet Media, but also cyberespionage, fund-raising for Russia’s war in Ukraine and the laundering of funds to covertly purchase light matériel, including sniper rifles, drones and night-vision goggles from China and other countries.
The announcement on Friday, along with a series of recent investigations by the Justice Department and the F.B.I., signaled an intensifying effort by the Biden administration to thwart Russia’s influence operations before the presidential election in November.
U.S. intelligence officials have said that the Kremlin is seeking to bolster former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign, angered by the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine. The announcement on Friday was meant to spotlight RT’s global activities, U.S. officials said.
The officials have tracked similar efforts involving RT to interfere in other countries, such as Argentina, France and Moldova, which goes to the polls next month and has become a particular target of the Kremlin’s interference. RT covertly operates an English-language news outlet in Germany called Red., and another that covers Africa, called African Stream, Mr. Blinken said.
RT, as well as Red. and African Stream, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the accusations.
The sanctions announced on Friday are an effort to undercut RT by making it difficult for the organization to conduct global business in dollars, which officials hope will curtail its ability to work outside Russia.
The campaign is not unlike the one the Trump administration began, with mixed results, against Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant that officials feared posed a threat to U.S. national security interests. The United States, under the Trump and Biden administrations, has sought to warn countries about relying on Huawei for critical infrastructure.
“We’re exposing what they do in country after country around the world,” said James P. Rubin, the coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which focuses on foreign propaganda and disinformation efforts.
RT, with broadcast and streaming channels in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and other languages, has long been an irritant to the United States. It has for years pushed a Kremlin view of the world, one increasingly shaped by hostility toward American political and diplomatic power under Republican and Democratic presidents.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, however, U.S. officials have grown increasingly concerned that RT’s activities extend beyond providing news. They have cited the network’s cooperation with Russia’s intelligence apparatus, including the Federal Security Service, the domestic successor of the Soviet K.G.B.
In the spring of 2023, the officials said, the Russian government created a cell within RT to carry out cyberespionage.
In July, the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and the Pentagon’s Cyber National Mission Force accused an editor at RT of working with an F.S.B. officer to oversee the creation of hundreds of fake accounts on X that spread the network’s content.
The U.S. agencies were assisted by the police and intelligence in Canada and the Netherlands, jointly issuing an advisory calling on social media companies to identify fictitious accounts on their platforms “to reduce Russian malign foreign influence activity.” (X, formerly known as Twitter, took down nearly 1,000 accounts after officials notified the platform.)
Among the steps the Biden administration took last week, the Treasury Department announced that it had extended sanctions that were imposed because of the war in Ukraine to include several officials at RT. They included Margarita S. Simonyan, the editor in chief, and two deputies.
The department accused one of the deputies, Anton S. Anisimov, of conducting “activities on behalf of the Russian Federal Security Service.” Officials said Mr. Anisimov administered an online crowdfunding platform in Russia that ostensibly supported the country’s troops but was covertly used to buy weapons around the world, including from China, which has denied that it provides lethal arms or military assistance to Russia.
Mr. Blinken imposed sanctions on Friday to RT as a whole. Any transactions conducted in dollars could now be subject to freezing or seizure by Treasury.
Canada and Britain also made simultaneous announcements warning about RT’s covert activities.
The goal of the sanctions and diplomacy is to alert countries where RT remains a popular source of global news — including in many parts of Africa, the Middle East and South America — to the potential for Russian influence campaigns against governments that fall out of the Kremlin’s favor.
“We will not stand by as RT and other actors carry out covert activities in support of Russia’s nefarious activities,” Mr. Blinken said. “And we’ll continue to respond forcefully to Moscow’s playbook of aggression and subversion, one that includes invading sovereign nations, fomenting coups, weaponizing corruption, carrying out assassinations, meddling in elections and unjustly detaining foreign nationals.”
Last year, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center disclosed a covert information operation to push Kremlin-friendly content in Central and South America by producing articles that appeared to originate with local media organizations, not the Russian government.
That campaign involved two companies, the Social Design Agency and Structura, that were cited in last week’s indictment. Both report to Sergei V. Kiriyenko, a former prime minister who is now a senior adviser to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
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