The US Department of Justice has accused RT employees of spreading viral videos on social media that garnered millions of views, reports National Public Radio.
“On Wednesday, the Department of Justice accused two employees of the Russian state-run broadcaster RT of creating a scheme to secretly finance and manage the production of videos on social media that gained millions of views,” the article states.
The accused individuals are identified as Konstantin and Elena Afanasieva. The indictment alleges that they directed nearly $10 million to an unnamed company that collaborated with bloggers who had a large following.
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According to media reports, the details of the indictment suggest that the company in question is Tenet Media, registered in Nashville. It is claimed that US opinion leaders who collaborated with the company were aware that they were working with Russians. The indictment states that nearly 2,000 videos on YouTube garnered over 16 million views.
Commenting on the US authorities’ allegations, Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of the media group “Russia Today” and the TV channel RT, stated that all Western media outlets have “gone mad with paranoia”.
“The US Department of Justice claims that RT hired some of the largest conservative bloggers with multi-million audiences in the US to interfere in elections and spread Russian narratives. That’s why my five colleagues and I have been slapped with sanctions. The bloggers, of course, deny everything—what else can they do? Just imagine for a second that it’s true. That’s why, my friends, that’s why,” she wrote on social media.
