Russian Media Outlets Spent Over $146 Million On Targeting US Since 2016

US media is report­ing that Russ­ian media out­lets have spent more than $146 mil­lion on for­eign influ­ence oper­a­tions and pro­pa­gan­da in the US since 2016. Accord­ing to an OpenSe­crets investigation:

Octo­ber 15, 2021 Russ­ian media out­lets report­ed spend­ing more than $146 mil­lion on for­eign influ­ence oper­a­tions and pro­pa­gan­da in the U.S. since 2016, with over $16 mil­lion on pro­pa­gan­da tar­get­ing the U.S. in 2021, OpenSe­crets’ analy­sis of new For­eign Agents Reg­is­tra­tion Act records shows.   And that’s just the spend­ing that Russ­ian for­eign agents have dis­closed to the Jus­tice Depart­ment under FARA.  The U.S. gov­ern­ment has iden­ti­fied mul­ti­ple online media sites that are direct­ed by Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices and not dis­closed through FARA, spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion to under­mine COVID-19 vac­cines pro­duced out­side Rus­sia. Social media plat­forms have also become a breed­ing ground for even more Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da cam­paigns that are often not dis­closed in FARA filings.

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In 2021 alone, RIA Novosti and Rossiya Segod­nya, Russia’s state-owned news agen­cies that run the Eng­lish-lan­guage out­lets RT and Sput­nik, spent togeth­er over $16,7 mil­lion in the US, accord­ing to For­eign Agents Reg­is­tra­tion Act records.