By Scott Ritter, Consortium News, 9/19/24

Most Americans approached last weekend thinking about how they would spend the much-anticipated end of the work week with their friends and family.

Few realize how close they came to actualizing the scenario so horrifyingly spelled out in Annie Jacobsen’s alarming must-read book, Nuclear War: A Scenario.

72 minutes.

That is all it takes to end the world as we know it.

That is less time than most movies playing at the local cinema.

Most people could not drive to the local home improvement store to buy the materials needed to do the little repairs around the home that usually wait for the weekend.

Walk the dogs?

Play with the kids?

Forget about it.

72 minutes.

And everything you thought you lived your life for would be dead.

And if you survived?

To quote Nikita Khrushchev, “The survivors would envy the dead.”

Ukraine, together with many of its NATO allies, has been asking for permission from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to be able to employ precision-guided long-range weapons systems provided by these countries against targets deep inside Russia.

On Sept. 6, at a meeting of the Ramstein Contact Group, a forum where U.S.-NATO military support to Ukraine is coordinated, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky personally appealed to the group for more weapons support from its Western allies and called on allies to allow Ukraine to use the weapons they provided to strike deeper inside Russia.

Zelensky Seeks ‘Long-Range Capability’

 Zelensky and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, on Sept. 6. (DoD/Chad J. McNeeley)

“We need to have this long-range capability,” Zelensky said, addressing the attendees, who included U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin,

“not only on the divided territory of Ukraine but also on Russian territory so that Russia is motivated to seek peace. We need to make Russian cities, and even Russian soldiers think about what they need: peace or Putin.”

Secretary Austin, in comments made afterwards, said he didn’t think the use of long-range missiles to strike inside Russia would help end the war, adding that he expected the conflict would be resolved through negotiations. Moreover, Austin noted, Ukraine had its own weapons capable of attacking targets well beyond the range of the British Storm Shadow cruise missile.

Despite Austin’s pushback, President Joe Biden appeared to be on track to give Zelensky the green light he was looking for regarding the use of British-provided Storm Shadow cruise missiles and U.S.-provided long-range ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles for strikes on Russian soil.

On Sept. 11, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, accompanied by British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, visited Ukraine, where they held meetings with Zelensky and his newly appointed foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha. 

Blinken & Lammy in Ukraine

Blinken and Lammy, on right side of table in center, meeting with Sybiha, opposite them, in Kiev on Sept. 11. (State Department/Chuck Kennedy

Blinken and Lammy, however, failed to make the announcement the Ukrainians were waiting with bated breath to hear. Instead, Blinken and Lammy reiterated the full support of their respective nations to Ukraine’s victory, adding that they would adapt their support to meet Ukrainian needs. “The bottom line is this: We want Ukraine to win,” Blinken said after his meeting with Zelensky.

The stage was now set for Keir Starmer, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, to fly to Washington, D.C., last Friday, where he would meet with Biden and jointly agree to give Ukraine permission to use Storm Shadow and ATACMS against targets inside Russia.

Starmer Goes to Washington

Starmer with members of the press on his way to Washington last Friday. (Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Russia has long made it clear that it would view any nation which authorized the use of its weapons to strike Russia as a direct party to the conflict. 

In comments to the media in Russia  last Thursday — one day before the Biden-Starmer meeting at the White House — Russian President Vladimir Putin made it clear that any lifting of the restrictions on Ukrainian use of U.S.- and U.K.-provided long-range weapons would change “the very essence of the conflict.”  He said:

“This will mean that NATO countries, the United States, European countries are fighting Russia. And if this is the case, then…we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, speaking after Putin’s announcement, noted that the Russian president’s words were “extremely clear” and that they had reached their intended audience — U.S. President Biden. 

Biden didn’t seem happy about the message. In responding to a question from reporters prior to his meeting with Prime Minister Starmer at the White House about what he thought about Putin’s warning, Biden snapped angrily, “I don’t think much about Vladimir Putin.”

Putin in a meeting in Moscow last week.  (Kremlin)

The evidence suggests otherwise.

At a White House press conference that same day, Robbie Gramer, the White House correspondent for Politico, asked John Kirby, the spokesperson for the National Security Council, “Do you take Putin at his words that strikes into Russian territory by U.S. — or British — or French-made missiles would actually expand the war?”

Kirby’s response was telling in many ways. “It’s hard to take anything coming out of Putin’s face at his word.  But this is not rhetoric that we haven’t heard from him before, so there’s really not a lot new there.”

Gramer followed up: “So, in other words, you know, in the deliberations about this long-range strike, threats from Putin are not a big factor for you guys in your deliberations on this?”

“Well,” Kirby responded,

“you didn’t let me finish the answer, so let me try…I never said, nor have I — would we ever say that we don’t take Mr. Putin’s threats seriously.  When he starts brandishing the nuclear sword, for instance, yeah, we take that seriously, and we constantly monitor that kind of activity.  He obviously has proven capable of aggression. 

He has obviously proven capable of escalation over the last, now, going on three years. So, yeah, we take these comments seriously, but it is not something that we haven’t heard before.  So, we take note of it.  Got it.  We have our own calculus for what we decide to provide to Ukraine and what not.  And I think I’d leave it there.”

Just to drive the point home, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, told the Security Council last Friday that NATO would “be a direct party to hostilities against a nuclear power,” if it allowed Ukraine to use longer range weapons against Russia. “You shouldn’t forget about this and think about the consequences,” he declared.

‘Don’t Play With Fire’

Nebenzia in June. (UN Photo/Manuel Elías)

The finishing touches on driving home the seriousness of Putin’s warning was left to the Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov. Speaking to the Russian media also last Friday Antonov said he was surprised that many American officials believed that 

“if there is a conflict, it will not spread to the territory of the United States of America. I am constantly trying to convey to them one thesis that the Americans will not be able to sit it out behind the waters of this ocean. This war will affect everyone, so we constantly say – do not play with this rhetoric.”

Putin’s words had caught the attention of several former U.S. government officials, who had called Antonov for clarification.

“Yesterday’s statements from Vladimir Putin were weighed very carefully here. Several ex-officials called me asking to explain what actually stands behind those statements. I simply replied: ‘Don’t play with fire.’”

Antonov at Arlington National Cemetery in 2018, during a commemoration of the cooperation of U.S., Soviet and Allied armed forces during World War II. (U.S Army/ Elizabeth Fraser, Public domain)

Antonov’s sentiments were likely echoed through existing back-channel communications used by the Department of Defense and the C.I.A.

In the end, the message got through — Biden pulled back from giving Ukraine the permissions it sought.

Most Americans are unaware about how close they came to waking up Saturday morning, only to find that it was their last.

Ukraine Was Ready to Launch

Had Biden yielded to Starmer’s pressure (the British, together with Ukraine and several NATO nations, believed that Putin was bluffing), and signed off on the permission, Ukraine was prepared to launch strikes on Russia that night.

(British soldiers deployed in Ukraine would be needed to operate the Storm Shadows and they are already there, according to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has refused to send similar weapons to Ukraine.)

Russia would likely have responded with conventional attacks on Kiev using new weapons, such as the Avangard hypersonic warhead, which would each deliver a blow equivalent to 26-28 tons of explosives.

Russia would also most likely have struck NATO targets in Poland and Romania where Ukrainian fighters are based. And, lastly, Russia would have struck British military targets, possibly including those on the British Isles.

This would prompt a NATO retaliation under Article 5, using a large number of NATO long-range strike weapons targeting Russian command and control, airfields, and ammunition storage facilities.

The Russian response would most likely involve the launching of more Avangard conventional warheads against NATO targets, including Ramstein airbase and NATO headquarters, as well as airbases from which strikes against Russia were launched.

NATO headquarters in Brussels. (NATO)

At this juncture the United States, using nuclear employment plans derived from a nuclear posture which emphasizes the pre-emptive use of low yield nuclear weapons to “escalate to deescalate”— i.e., force Russia to back down through a demonstration of capability — would authorize the use of one or more low-yield nuclear warheads against Russian targets on Russian soil.

But Russian doctrine has no capacity for engaging in a limited nuclear war. Instead, Russia would respond with a general nuclear retaliation targeting all of Europe and the United States.

Whatever U.S. strategic forces that survived this onslaught would be fired at Russia.

And then we all die.

72 minutes.

And the world ends.

We were one stroke of the pen away from this outcome on Friday, Sept. 13, 2024.

This isn’t a drill.

This isn’t an academic exercise.

This is the real world.

This is life or death.

This is your future held hostage by a madman in Kiev, backed by lunatics in Europe.

The question is — what are we going to do about it?

There is an election on Nov. 5 where the next commander-in-chief of the United States will be selected by “we, the people.”

This person will be the one holding the pen in any future scenario where life or death decisions that could manifest into a general nuclear war will be made.

It is incumbent upon we, the people, to make sure that Americans demand the candidates for this office articulate their policy vision regarding the war in Ukraine, the prospects of peace with Russia, and what they will do to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war.

But they won’t do that if we, the people, remain silent about the issue.

Stand up.

Speak out.

Demand to be heard.

72 minutes is all it takes to end life as we know it.

We almost all died over the weekend of Sept. 14-15, 2024.

What are we going to do to make sure that doesn’t happen again?

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

By Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter, 9/12/24

The following article was made possible by paid subscribers of The Dissenter. Become a subscriber with this special offer and support independent journalism on press freedom.

The civil liberties organization Defending Rights and Dissent sued the FBI and United States Justice Department for withholding records on WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. 

“For nearly a decade and a half, we’ve been trying to get at the truth about the U.S. government’s war on WikiLeaks,” declared Chip Gibbons, the policy director for Defending Rights and Dissent. 

Gibbons added, “With the legal persecution of Julian Assange finally over, the FBI must come clean to the American people.”

On June 25, 2024, U.S. government attorneys submitted a plea agreement [PDF] in the U.S. District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands after Assange agreed to plead guilty to one conspiracy charge under the U.S. Espionage Act. 

Assange was released on bail from London’s Belmarsh prison, where he had been jailed for over five years while fighting a U.S. extradition request. He flew on a charter flight to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory where a plea hearing was held.

The plea agreement marked the end of a U.S. campaign to target and suppress Assange and WikiLeaks that spanned 14 years and first intensified after WikiLeaks published documents from U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning that exposed crimes committed in U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as U.S. complicity in human rights abuses in dozens of countries around the world. 

“As soon as we began publishing newsworthy stories about US war crimes in 2010, we know the US government responded to what was one of most consequential journalistic revelations of the 21st century by spying on and trying to criminalize First Amendment-protected journalism,” stated WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson.  

Hrafnsson continued, “While WikiLeaks has fought for transparency, the U.S. government has cloaked its war on journalism in secrecy. That’s why Defending Rights & Dissent’s lawsuit is so important, as it will help unmask the FBI’s efforts to criminalize journalism.”

SPECIAL DISCOUNT: Subscribe To The Dissenter

On June 27, Defending Rights and Dissent requested [PDF] “all records created, maintained, or in the custody of the FBI that mention or reference: WikiLeaks; Julian Assange.”

The FBI separated the request into two requests—one for files mentioning “WikiLeaks,” one for files mentioning Julian Assange. And by August 19, the organization was informed by the FBI that it would take around five and a half years (2,010 days) to “complete action.” 

Previously, on June 22, 2021, Defending Rights and Dissent submitted a nearly identical request. It took the FBI two years to respond and notify the organization that the documents could not be provided because there was a “law enforcement” proceeding that was pending against Assange. 

The FBI became involved in pursuing an investigation against Assange and WikiLeaks in December 2010. 

Subscribe To Free Edition Of The Dissenter

In 2011, FBI agents and prosecutors flew to Iceland to investigate what they claimed was a cyber attack against Iceland’s government systems. But as Iceland Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson told the Associated Press in 2013, it became clear that the FBI agents and prosecutors came to Iceland to “frame” Assange and WikiLeaks. 

The FBI was interested in interviewing Sigurdur Thordarson, a serial liar and sociopath who embezzled funds from the WikiLeaks store and sexually preyed on underage boys. As I recount in my book “Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange,” Thordarson subsequently became an FBI informant or cooperating witness.  

“When I learned about it, I demanded that Icelandic police cease all cooperation and made it clear that people interviewed or interrogated in Iceland should be interrogated by Icelandic police,” Jónasson added. 

A little more than a year before the U.S. government’s prosecution against Assange collapsed, the FBI approached three journalists who had worked with Assange but had a falling-out with him. Each refused to help U.S. prosecutors further their attack on journalism. 

“The decision to respond to reporting on U.S. war crimes with foreign counterintelligence investigations, criminal prosecutions, and dirty tricks continues to cast a dark shadow over our First Amendment right to press freedom,” Gibbons said.

Gibbons concluded, “We will work tirelessly to see that all files documenting how the FBI criminalized and investigated journalism are made available to the public.”

Russia Matters, 9/20/24

1. Rossiiskaya Gazeta has just published an interview with the head of Russia’s Central Test Site, in which he vowed that this facility, which hosted more than 200 nuclear detonations before 1990, is ready to resume testing at any moment. In the interview with this Russian government daily, Rear Adm. Andrei Sinitsyn states at least thrice that this Novaya Zemlya archipelago-based facility is ready for resuming tests. “If the order is given, we will begin tests at any moment,” the admiral stated. “If the task is set to resume testing, it will be completed within the specified time frame,” he vowed.  “The test site is ready to resume full-scale testing activities,” he said.¹ Sinitsyn’s interview is apparently meant to contribute to the Russian military-political leadership’s continued effort to dissuade the U.S. and its allies from approving Ukraine’s use of Western-made long-range missiles against targets inside “mainland Russia,” as well to exercise general pressure on the U.S. and allies as they ponder the amount and types of continued military aid to Ukraine. The interview was published less than a week after Vladimir Putin warned that if NATO countries allow Ukraine to use their long-range missiles for such strikes, it would mean that these countries “are at war with Russia.” Russia “will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us,” according to Putin, who has earlier said that Russia will resume nuclear tests if the U.S. does.*
2. The number of Ukrainians and Russians killed or wounded in the war has reached roughly one million, WSJ reported, citing Ukrainian and Western estimates. Ukraine’s and Russia’s casualties are estimated to have totaled 480,000 and 600,000, respectively, this daily reported. Mobilization for the Ukrainian army, which is expected to help compensate for its personnel losses, is on track, but it would take another three months before the newly-trained troops could make an impact on the battlefield, head of the defense committee of Ukraine’s parliament, Oleksandr Zavitnevych, told the FT. One obstacle for this recruitment campaign is that Ukraine has lost at least 10 million people to occupation or as refugees in the past decade, according to Ukrainian government estimates cited by WSJ. About one year ago, U.S. officials estimated that the total number of Ukrainian and Russian troops killed or wounded since the war in Ukraine began was nearing half a million, according to NYT. Thus, if these latest estimates are accurate, then casualties have doubled in about one year.
3. Russian authorities have reportedly ordered their armed forces to push Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region by mid-October 2024 and to establish a “buffer zone” into Ukrainian border areas along the international border with Russia in northeastern Ukraine by the end of October, according to ISW. It has also been reported by The Guardian that Russia’s military had anticipated a possible Ukrainian advance into the southwestern Kursk region for months prior to the actual incursion in early August.
4. Ukraine’s electricity deficit this winter could reach as much as 6GW, around a third of anticipated peak demand, according to the IEA. “It’s time for everybody to understand that this winter could be consequential in Ukraine,” Fatih Birol, director-general of this agency, told the FT. Half of all Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been destroyed, roughly equivalent to the capacity of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, according to FT. 
5. U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic party’s presidential nominee, will hold separate meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sept. 26 to discuss what he calls Ukraine’s “victory plan.” Zelenskyy has refused to disclose the plan, which he also wants to share with Donald Trump. The Ukrainian leader did disclose that “most of the decisions on the plan depend” on Biden, and that these decisions need to be made in October to December, according to Ukrainska Pravda. Zelenskyy’s decision to focus on obtaining Biden’s support during his visit to the U.S. is understandable, given that a potential Trump administration’s approach to ending the war calls for a “demilitarized zone” on Ukrainian territory and a guarantee of its neutrality, according to Republican vice-presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance.

By Andrew Napolitano, Consortium News, 9/12/24

In 1966, two famous Russian literary dissidents, Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, were tried and convicted on charges of disseminating propaganda against the Soviet state.

The two were authors and humorists who published satire abroad that mocked Soviet leaders for failure to comply with the Soviet Constitution of 1936, which guaranteed the freedom of speech.

Their convictions sparked international outrage. Former U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, and then America’s U.N. ambassador, Arthur Goldberg called the charges and the trial “an outrageous attempt to give the form of legality to the suppression of a basic human right.”

When a secret transcript of the trial was circulated in the West, it became clear that Daniel and Sinyavsky were convicted of using words and expressing ideas contrary to what Soviet leaders wanted. They were sentenced to five and seven years, respectively, of hard labor in Soviet prison camps.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Political  Justice took a page from the Soviets and charged Americans and Russians with disseminating anti-Biden administration propaganda in Russia and here in the U.S. What ever happened to the freedom of speech?

Here is the backstory.

The Framers who crafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, both under the leadership and the pen of James Madison, were the same generation that revolted violently against King George III and Parliament and won the American Revolution.

The revolution was more than just six years of war in the colonies. It was a radical change in the minds of men — elites like Thomas Jefferson and Madison, as well as farmers and laborers generally untutored in political philosophy.

Untutored they may have been, but they knew they wanted to be able to speak their minds, associate and worship as they pleased, defend themselves, and be left alone by the government. The key to all this was the freedom of speech. Speech was then, as it is today, the most essential freedom.

The late Harvard Professor Bernard Bailyn read and analyzed all the extant speeches, sermons, lectures, editorials and pamphlets that he could find from the revolutionary period and concluded that in 1776 only about one-third of the colonists favored a violent separation from England. By the war’s end in 1781, around two-thirds welcomed independence.

Independence — From England & Government

Portrait of James Madison by John Vanderlyn. (White House Historical Association, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

But independence was bilateral. It meant not just independence from England but independence from the new government here as well.

In order to assure independence from the federal government, the colonies ratified the Constitution. Its purpose was to establish a limited central government.

After the Constitution was ratified and the federal government was established, five colonies threatened to secede from it unless the Constitution was amended to include absolute prohibitions on the government from interfering with natural individual rights.

During the drafting of the Bill of Rights, Madison, who chaired the House of Representatives committee that did the drafting, insisted that the word “the” precede the phrase “freedom of speech, or of the press” in order to manifest to the ratifiers and to posterity the Framers’ collective understanding of the origin of these rights.

That understanding was the belief that expressive rights are natural to all persons, no matter where they were born, and natural rights are, as Jefferson had written in the Declaration of Independence, inalienable.

Stated differently, Madison and his colleagues gave us a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that on their face recognized the pre-political existence of the freedom of speech and of the press in all persons and guaranteed that the Congress — by which they meant the government — could not and would not abridge them.

Until now.

“Free Speech * Conditions Apply” by Fukt. (wiredforlego, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

In the past two weeks, the feds have secured indictments against two Americans living in Russia who are also Russian citizens working for a Russian television network that expressed political views — the feds call this propaganda — contrary to the views of the Biden administration.

The same feds secured an indictment against Americans and Canadians for funneling pro-Russian ideas to the American public through social media influencers. The feds, who call the words being used by their targets “disinformation,” apparently believe that the First Amendment has some holes in it for the speech that the government hates and fears.

That belief is profoundly erroneous.

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to keep the government out of the business of evaluating the content of speech. The strength of an idea is its acceptance in the public marketplace of ideas not in the minds of government. This is political speech that is critical of government policies — that would be the very speech in which you and I and millions of Americans engage every day.

The speech we love to hear needs no protection because we welcome it. But the speech that challenges; irritates; expresses alternative views; exposes the government’s lies, cheats and killings — even harsh, caustic, hateful speech — is the very speech that the First Amendment was written to protect.

The United States has not declared war on Russia. Under international law, there is no legal basis for such a declaration. The U.S., however, which supplies weapons for its proxy Ukraine to attack Russia, is far more a threat to Russia than Russia is to the U.S. But you’d never know that by listening to the government. Now the government doesn’t even want you to hear speech that contradicts its narrative.

In reading about the Soviet show trial of Daniel and Sinyavsky and the recent indictments of Americans and others for expressing so-called Russian propaganda, my stomach turned. The federal government has become what it once condemned.

Just like the Soviets in 1966, it mocks free speech, it assaults basic human rights, it evades the Constitution it is commanded to uphold and now it punishes those who dare to disagree. This may bring it to the same untimely end as the Soviet Union it now emulates.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, was the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and hosts the podcast Judging Freedom. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

Published by permission of the author.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO 

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

The Guardian, 9/16/24

Facebook owner Meta said on Monday it was banning RT, Rossiya Segodnya and other Russian state media networks, alleging the outlets used deceptive tactics to carry out influence operations while evading detection on the social media company’s platforms.

“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” the company said in a written statement.

Enforcement of the ban would roll out over the coming days, it said. In addition to Facebook, Meta’s apps include Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads.

The Russian embassy did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The ban marks a sharp escalation in actions by the world’s biggest social media company against Russian state media, after it spent years taking more limited steps such as blocking the outlets from running ads and reducing the reach of their posts.

It came after the US filed money-laundering charges earlier this month against two RT employees for what officials said was a scheme to hire a US company to produce online content to influence the 2024 election.

On Friday, US secretary of state Antony Blinken announced new sanctions against the Russian state-backed media company, formerly known as Russia Today, after new information gleaned from the outfit’s employees showed it was “functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus”.

“Today, we’re exposing how Russia deploys similar tactics around the world,” Blinken said. “Russian weaponization of disinformation to subvert and polarize free and open societies extends to every part of the world.”

The Russian government in 2023 established a new unit in RT with “cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence”, Blinken claimed, with the goal of spreading Russian influence in countries around the world through information operations, covert influence and military procurement.

Blinken said the US treasury would sanction three entities and two individuals tied to Rossiya Segodnya, the Russian state media company. The decision came after the announcement earlier this month that RT had funneled nearly $10m to conservative US influencers through a local company to produce videos meant to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

Speaking to reporters from the state department on Friday, Blinken accused RT of crowdfunding weapons and equipment for Russian soldiers in Ukraine, including sniper rifles, weapon sights, body armor, night-vision equipment, drones, radio equipment and diesel generators. Some of the equipment, including the recon drones, could be sourced from China, he said.

Blinken also detailed how the organisation had targeted countries in Europe, Africa and North and South America. In particular, he said that RT leadership had coordinated directly with the Kremlin to target the October 2024 elections in Moldova, a former Soviet state in Europe where Russia has been accused of waging a hybrid war to exert greater influence. In particular, he said, RT’s leadership had “attempted to foment unrest in Moldova, likely with the specific aim of causing protests to turn violent”.

“RT is aware of and prepared to assist Russia’s plans to incite protests should the election not result in a Russia-preferred candidate winning the presidency,” Blinken said.