The Hidden Matryoshka: The Strategic Weaponization of Russian Disinformation Campaigns Through RT

10.58867/OLDL6896

In the context of geopolitical dynamics in the 21^st century, the nexus of international media platforms and politics has taken on an increasingly strategic role, ultimately becoming an imperative statecraft tool for authoritarian regimes seeking to shape global public opinion. Since the creation of Russia Today (RT) in 2005, the state-funded international media outlet has become one of the most important public platforms for the Russian government to justify its domestic and foreign policies.[1] With the full-scale illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, RT’s role in the grey-zone landscape of Russian influence has become increasingly blurry, facing severe allegations of functioning as a de facto intelligence arm and mouthpiece of the Russian regime.  

Navigating Covert Operations – The U.S. Sanctions Regime on RT

On September 13, 2024, United States (U.S.) Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly announced the implementation of a wide array of new sanctions and visa restrictions targeting two employees of RT, along with Margarita Simonyan, Editor-in-Chief of the Russian state-funded and allegedly government-directed media outlet. Besides, further announced U.S. sanctions aim to target RT’s parent organisation, TV-Novosti, a related state media group called Rossiya Segodnya and its general director Dmitry Kiselyov, as well as Nelli Parutenko, director of “ANO Eurasia,” accused of organising a vote-buying scheme to influence the upcoming presidential elections in Moldova.[2] The politically motivated decision to impose new sanctions followed directly after the public announcement in early September 2024 when RT had been accused of funnelling nearly $10 million to conservative U.S. influencers through a local company in Tennessee to produce videos meant to influence the outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential election in November.[3]

Similar structures of foreign interference by RT are not new and can be traced back to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[4] According to ongoing U.S.-led intelligence investigations, RT has also acquired cyber capabilities and has been involved in a multitude of covert operations to influence global public opinion and foreign socio-political processes.[5]Amidst the political campaigning for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, the U.S. Department of State referred to several intelligence files delineating RT’s sophisticated capabilities as an allegedly de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence network. RT’s covert operations allegedly include the dissemination of disinformation campaigns, the manipulation of media narratives, and fostering divisions within democratic societies.[6]

Furthermore, RT Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Head of International Broadcasting for Sputnik, Anton Anisimov, is being accused of administering a large online crowdfunding platform to sponsor the ongoing illegal Russian war through material support and weaponry to Russia’s military units that are stationed in Ukraine.[7] Additionally, Antony Blinken accused RT of engaging in wide-scale military procurement by predominantly sourcing its supply from the People’s Republic of China. The military equipment, inter alia, includes night-vison goggles, sniper rifles, and diesel generators.[8]

Finally, Blinken also mentioned several international proxy media outlets, such as 'African Stream,' a pan-African media outlet, and 'red.media,' based in Germany, that are covertly used by RT to disseminate pro-Russian information.[9] This strategic shift towards proxy outlets can be explained by the decision of the Council of the European Union (EU) in 2022, which suspended the broadcasting activities of Sputnik and RT. Ultimately, the U.S. urged for collaborative measures to tackle hybrid threats from RT through intelligence diplomacy. While some U.S. allies were hesitant in their responses,[10]the EU announced a new sanctions regime countering Russian hybrid threats, yet still failing to ban RT’s local proxies.[11]

Russia’s Hidden Matryoshka – Existence of an Ideal Principal-Agent Relationship?

Since its organisational establishment in 2005, RT has arguably become one of the most influential multilingual media channels that broadcasts its content to a weekly audience of 100 million viewers in 47 countries.[12] While the Kremlin originally allocated only $30 million in 2005, RT’s budget rapidly grew to $300 million in 2011 and to $400 million by 2017.[13] Similar upward trends can also be seen in the number of international journalists employed by RT,[14]showcasing its significant role within the Russian state apparatus. However, the initial operational objective of RT has not always been the same. 

Since its establishment in 2005, RT has mainly followed an agenda of disseminating information on Russian culture and pro-Russian news. This changed significantly on August 7, 2008 with the onset of the Russo-Georgian war, functioning as a critical juncture in the Russian weaponization of disinformation.[15] Subsequently, in an effort to obfuscate its intricate affiliation with the Russian state, RT changed its initial logo “Russia Today” to the more neutral “RT”.[16] It has since utilised anti-Western rhetoric and promoted conspiracy theories about Western media.[17] This tendency only exacerbated after the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, after which RT increasingly justified the foreign policy of the Russian government.[18]

Much like RT's biased portrayal of the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, Russia's military intervention in Syria starting in 2015 was similarly framed in a predominantly positive light. Immediately after Russia launched airstrikes on September 30th, 2015, initially intended to target militants and terrorist cells within Syria, RT tried to justify one of the most far-reaching foreign policy actions in recent years. Since then, RT has published a large amount of articles and videos on the Syrian Civil War,[19] utilising a range of affect and emotive stimuli that were essentially layered across audio, textual, and visual features of the broadcast. Repetitive themes framed through an emotional-rationalist lens were, inter alia, support towards Russia’s militarity masculinity, distrust of Western institutions, and anger towards U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. 

These media frames were also repeatedly used during the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, claiming that the Russian government acted with decisiveness and strategic clarity, suggesting a successful foreign policy framework that was legitimised by international treaties. Compared to RT’s framing during the annexation of Crimea and in the conflicts in Georgia and Syria, the current framing of Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine has arguably been more straightforward. While upfront in its narratives to legitimise the so-called ”special operation” and discourage Western support for Kyiv, the broadcasting of RT remains immensely biased.[20] Considering RT’s strategic role within the tightly regulated Russian media landscape, its relationship with the Russian regime can be examined through the lens of the principal-agent theory. While the Russian state grants RT conditional authority to act on its behalf,[21] there are not yet indications of agency costs, suggesting that the relationship between RT and the Russian state apparatus represents an almost ideal symbiosis. Both the Russian state and RT benefit significantly from their relationship. While the Russian state is able to legitimise its domestic and foreign policies, RT gains extensive financial support and political power. 

A Post-Truth Era? Addressing the Firehose of Falsehood Model

Considering the depicted aspects, one may argue that whether RT actually possesses advanced cyber and military procurement capabilities and to what extent it is involved in disrupting democratic processes in foreign countries remains somewhat unclear due to a lack of reliable cross-researched sources. Nonetheless, prima facie, it cannot be denied that RT has become a potent instrument of Russian state influence across continents, leveraging its vast media network to propagate disinformation and cultivate an overexaggerated pro-Russian image. Examining the structural role of RT within the Russian communication network, one may argue that RT functions as an integral part of the Russian firehose of falsehood model,[22] in which a large number of messages are broadcasted rapidly over diverse channels such as news outlets and social media platforms. However, sophisticated options to fight such a high-volume and rapidly evolving system are rather scarce, especially in a supranational EU setting. 

In light of these challenges, one may put forward several policy recommendations to minimise the issues at hand. To begin with, one policy strategy to weaken the Russian firehose of falsehood model is technical disruption.[23] This advice was clearly followed by the EU in November 2022, when member states passed the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), which mainly aims to further regulate the so-called very large online platforms (VLOPs) and very large online search engines (VLOSEs). Yet, since the DSA has entered into effect in August 2023, its implications largely remain to be seen, as member states have yet to fully leverage its legal authority.[24] Particularly former communist countries in Eastern Europe, such as Bulgaria and Estonia, continue to struggle with large-scale online disinformation campaigns, directly affecting their socio-political environment.[25]

While member states that are lagging behind must take immediate action to fully implement the DSA and empower the competent authorities to fulfil their legal responsibilities, companies ought to abide by the DSA’s legal framework. Furthermore, the EU should take immediate action against prominent Russian proxy platforms to alleviate the burden on national authorities and mitigate the threat these platforms pose to public safety and democratic integrity. Finally, the EU ought to pro-actively expand the respective national education programs on media literacy, which remain underdeveloped across the EU; in 2021, only 54 percent of people in the EU aged 16 to 74 had at least basic digital skills.[26] Whether RT’s dissemination of disinformation can be minimized remains to be seen. Yet, with major media platforms such as Meta and X (formerly Twitter) scaling back fact-checking services,[27] the spread of disinformation is likely to increase. Nonetheless, it remains certain that if the international community fails to limit the influence of actors that continuously disseminate disinformation and fake news, the integrity of democratic institutions and democracy as a whole will be in severe jeopardy.[28]