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- professional" who had held various positions in Brussels and France at a multinational bank ("Bank-1"), including "Director of Private Banking [D]ivision and Wealth Management." After receiving the fictitious profile, Commentator-1 agreed to work with U.S. Company-1 and produced approximately 130 videos that were published on U.S. Company-1's platform.
BACKGROUND ON RUSSIAN INFLUENCE OPERATIONS
- RT is a Russian state-funded and state-directed media outlet. As RT's editor-in-chief has publicly acknowledged, "since RT receives budget from the state, it must complete tasks given by the state."[1] For nearly two decades, RT has promoted the objectives of the Government of Russia by publishing disinformation and propaganda, leveraging its international network to amplify the Government of Russia's message to foreign audiences, and using its guise as a conventional media outlet to lend credibility to that message. RT's propaganda is most obvious when it reports on matters of importance to the Government of Russia, such as public opinion about Ukraine in the United States. When direct propaganda is not effective, however, RT has pursued malign influence campaigns in countries opposed to its policies, including the United States, in an effort to sow domestic divisions and thereby weaken opposition to Government of Russia objectives. For example, in discussing RT's coverage of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union in 2016, an RT journalist recalled to an academic researcher: "I asked my editor, what is RT's line for this [Brexit], and he said: 'Anything that causes chaos is RT's line.'"
- In or about March 2022, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada banned broadcasting by RT. That same month, RT also ceased its operations in the United States after major television distributors
- ↑ All statements and writings described in this Indictment are presented in substance and in part, and all descriptions of Russian-language communications are based on draft English translations.
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