Commentary: Russia Used to Deny Interfering. Now it’s Celebrating its Successes.
With fewer guardrails and more reach, Moscow openly cheers its disinformation wins.
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Edited by Eric Effron and Sofia Rubinson
Commentary: Russia Used to Deny Interfering. Now it’s Celebrating its Successes.
There was a time when Russia insisted it wasn’t attempting to meddle in U.S. democracy. Now, it’s flaunting its interference efforts.
“It’s nonsense. We’re not interfering,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said ahead of the 2024 U.S. election. In 2022, in the run-up to the U.S. midterms, Peskov insisted that Russia had “no intention to meddle” in foreign elections. In 2016, he said that “Moscow is at pains to avoid any words that could be interpreted as direct or indirect interference in the election process.”
Fast forward to the era ushered in by U.S. President Donald Trump’s win in November 2024, including his executive order against government-funded efforts to counter misinformation, the message from Russia has changed. “Over the past three years of these new conditions in which we live, we have learned and become quite skilled in waging information wars,” Peskov said at a March 2025 press conference in Moscow. “And this is a great result, this is a great achievement.”
The pivot from denial to celebration comes at a time when technology companies have lowered their defenses against hostile foreign influence. Meta ended its fact-checking program in the U.S., while OpenAI said that it no longer sees disinformation and manipulation as a “risk” during the testing process before releasing new models. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department’s Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference hub has been shuttered, and dozens of U.S. federal employees tasked with monitoring foreign interference in elections have been laid off.
There are consequences. A NewsGuard/YouGov survey released on April 16 found that 33.9 percent of Americans believe at least one popular false Russian narrative. The false Russian claims in the survey were that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's approval rating is four percent, that Ukraine sold Hamas weapons that were donated to Ukraine by the United States, and that between 30 to 50 percent of U.S. aid money provided to Ukraine has been stolen by Ukrainian officials for personal use.
The Kremlin wasted no time taking credit and spinning the NewsGuard/YouGov findings into a propaganda win, demonstrating how open and unapologetic Russia has become about its influence efforts.
Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russian state-run RT (NewsGuard Trust Score: 20/100), wrote in an April 17 X post citing the NewsGuard/YouGov survey, “One in three Americans trusts RT, NewsGuard reports with alarm … Well done, team!”
Hours later, the Russian media apparatus joined the celebration. The headlines rolled out:
The pro-Kremlin Pravda network (Trust Score: 7.5/100): “Every third American trusts Russian media — survey results”
Russian state-run Sputnik News (Trust Score: 17.5/100): “NewsGuard expresses concern over Americans' trust in Russian media”
Russian state-run RIA Novosti (Trust Score: 12.5/100): “A third of Americans trust RIA Novosti and RT, a survey shows”
Moscow-based Pravda.ru (Trust Score: 17.5/100): “Voice of Reason: Western Populations Willingly Trust Russian Media”
Russian state-run Ukraina (Trust Score: 12.5/100): “Trump did not reconcile Moscow and Kyiv, but Americans began to love Russia more”
Russian economic and business news site 1prime.ru: “The US found out how much Americans trust Russian media”
Tsargrad, a TV station owned by Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeev: “A Third of Americans Believe Russian Fakes: Results of NewsGuard Poll”
U.S. fugitive turned Kremlin propagandist John Mark Dougan has also adopted the celebratory tone. Over the course of a year-long back-and-forth with NewsGuard, Dougan repeatedly hinted at his role in a sprawling network of fake local news sites across the U.S. — never explicitly admitting involvement but offering just enough details and cryptic hints to suggest he wanted credit without accountability.
By late October 2024, Dougan appeared on Russian state TV ahead of the U.S. elections to boast about his efforts: “They blamed my information for getting Congress to defund Ukraine … clearly I’m a danger to them.” At a Moscow roundtable about fighting “strategic disinformation,” Dougan received an enthusiastic round of applause after telling attendees that NewsGuard named him “Disinformer of the Year” for 2024.
In the same vein, pro-Kremlin activist Simeon Boikov, who goes by “AussieCossack” and whom NewsGuard has documented as spreading 33 false Russian narratives, said in a November 2024 Telegram post that he was proud that he “literally helped Trump and Elon get elected into office.”
The vulnerability to disinformation — Russian or otherwise — crosses political lines. According to the NewsGuard/YouGov survey, 82 percent of Democrats and 81 percent of Republicans believed at least one of the 10 false claims presented in the poll.
Some researchers have argued that efforts by NewsGuard and others to report on Russian disinformation poses a risk of overstating its influence while playing into the propagandists’ hands, by handing them a bigger stage and a justification for more resources.
However, there is no benefit in letting false claims fester unchecked without scrutiny or documentation. By understanding where these narratives come from, how they spread, and what kind of risk they pose, citizens can more easily spot manipulation when they’re fed it in their news diet. And democracies can better defend themselves against manipulation aimed at undermining democracy itself.
McKenzie Sadeghi is the AI and Foreign Influence Editor at NewsGuard.
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