All the ways Russia is influencing the US election

The White House’s recent exposure of Russian attempts to influence this year’s US presidential election will come as little surprise to anyone who followed disinformation tactics during the last US election.

During the 2020 campaign, the Kremlin used its state-sponsored media outlets, the international television channel RT and the news website and radio station Sputnik, to pump out a raft of content calling the legitimacy of the US democratic process into question. Networks of Russia-sponsored bots and trolls were also found to have been pushing divisive disinformation and conspiracy theories in online networks.

This time around, the US has seized a network of Russian-run internet domains and sanctioned ten people including Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of RT (formerly Russia Today), for “activities that aim to deteriorate public trust in our institutions.”

Sanctions include freezing any property or assets in the US and potentially restrictions on any US citizen or company that works with them.

The US has also charged two Moscow-based managers of RT, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, under money laundering law with paying US content creators to push out “pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation” in the US.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland said Russia was looking to create its “preferred outcome” in the upcoming presidential election and undermine US support for Ukraine in the war.

The practices alleged by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) closely match what my co-authors and I have identified in our new book, Russia, Disinformation and the Liberal Order, as having become standard practice in Russian attempts to influence international audiences.

We identified five key features of Russian