Oleg Davigora21:18, 09/04/24

Propagandist Margarita Simonyan and a number of top managers of Russia Today were blacklisted.

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has blacklisted 10 individuals and 2 entities as part of the US government’s coordinated response to Moscow’s attempts to influence the 2024 US presidential election .

“Russian state structures have long been using various tools, such as generative artificial intelligence (AI), deepfake and disinformation, in an attempt to undermine trust in the electoral processes and institutions of the United States,” the department’s website reads .

Beginning in early 2024, RT executives reportedly began making even more nefarious efforts to covertly recruit unwitting American influencers to support their malicious influence campaign.

RT is known to have used a front company to disguise its involvement or that of the Russian government in content designed to influence American audiences.

Today’s entries to the list complement the actions of law enforcement agencies taken by the Ministry of Justice, as well as the actions of the State Department regarding the inclusion of the propaganda media group Rossiya Segodnya and its five subsidiaries – RIA Novosti, RT, TV-Novosti, Ruptly and Sputnik – on the list of foreign representative offices, introduction of visa restrictions.

OFAC has listed propagandists Margarita Simonyan, Elizaveta Brodska, Anton Anisimov, Andriy Kiyashko, Konstantin Kalashnikov, Elena Afanasieva, Oleksiy Harashchenko, Anastasia Yermoshkina, and Oleksandr Nezhentsev for being owned or controlled by, or acting or purporting to act on behalf of or in interests, directly or indirectly, of the government of the Russian Federation. ANO “Dialog” and “Dialog Regions” were also included in the list.

The US prosecutor’s office charged two Russia Today employees, Kalashnikov and Afansieva, with “money laundering and violation of the Foreign Agents Act.”

(C)UNIAN 2024