The U.S. on Wednesday filed money-laundering charges against two employees of Russian state media network RT.
Russian lawmakers criticised U.S. punitive measures against RT, calling it an infringement on free speech. RT is a Russian state media group.
The U.S. justice department filed money-laundering charges against two RT employees. It has accused them of hiring a U.S. company to produce content aimed at influencing the upcoming presidential election.
Alleged Scheme
The employees allegedly used shell companies and fake personas to pay $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee company. These companies would produce online videos aimed at amplifying political divisions in the United States.
The U.S. Treasury and State departments also announced actions targeting RT, including the network’s top editor, Margarita Simonovna Simonyan.
U.S. officials said Russia’s goal is to exacerbate U.S. political divisions and weaken public support for American aid to Ukraine.
Previous U.S. intelligence reports found Moscow attempted to meddle in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Russian officials claim the U.S. has also interfered in its domestic affairs.
Russian Denial of Election Interference
The Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry have repeatedly said that Moscow has not meddled in the U.S. election, but is watching it closely.
Konstantin Kosachev, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s upper house of parliament, told RIA news agency that the U.S. moves were aimed at preventing alternative views from being made known.
“Russian media in this sense have become increasingly popular and in demand,” Kosachev told RIA.
“That is the reason behind the rabid reaction of the U.S. authorities, which is totally at odds with the principles of freedom of speech and defending the rights of journalists.”
Leonid Slutsky, chairman of the State Duma lower house’s foreign affairs committee, branded the sanctions “a witch-hunt, pressure on freedom of speech and vulgar censorship”.
“The agents of the ’empire of lies’ are waging war on everyone who tells the truth about the policy of contemporary neo-colonialists,” said Slutsky.
There was no immediate Kremlin reaction to the sanctions.
The Kremlin in June dismissed as absurd U.S. intelligence assertions that Russia sought to meddle in the election and has said that U.S. spies were intent on casting Russia as an enemy.
President Vladimir Putin had suggested in the past that, for Russia, Joe Biden would have been preferable to Donald Trump, though he spoke with irony about Biden.
Kremlin and Russian Lawmakers React
Ahead of the announcement of the sanctions, Russian lawmaker Maria Butina said any suggestion of meddling in the election was nonsense. Moscow, she said, felt that the only winner of the election would be the U.S. military-industrial complex.
“The U.S. claims were and are pure rubbish and a witch hunt,” Butina said. She spent 15 months in U.S. prison for acting as an unregistered Russian agent. She is now a lawmaker for the ruling United Russia party.
“Russia thinks it does not matter who wins the U.S. elections – the only winner is the U.S. private military-industrial complex. That is what matters – and nothing else,” Butina said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview published on Sunday that Russia saw U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a more predictable opponent than Trump, but said there was no prospect of an improvement in relations with Washington anyway.
(with inputs from Reuters)
