New Russian Media Venture Wants to Wage ‘Information War’ in Washington, D.C.

LACHLAN MARKAY

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USA Really launched with a goal of stopping disinformation about Russia. A video it ran features an American flag and a Confederate flag alongside a MAGA poster of Donald Trump. A Russian government adviser who aims to wage an “information war” in the U.S. and Europe is running a new media venture a block from the White House that cybersecurity experts say has ties to the country’s infamous disinformation apparatus. In April, Russia’s Federal News Agency (FAN) announced the creation of an American outlet called “USA Really.” Its website and accompanying social media pages sprang up in May and quickly began promoting a mid-June rally to be held in front of the White House in protest of “growing political censorship… aimed at discrediting the Russian Federation.”

At the helm of the project is Alexander Malkevich, a Russian media executive and a member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, a body created by President Vladimir Putin in 2005 to advise government policymaking.

Malkevich sits on the Civic Chamber’s commission on mass media and communication. He is also running the show at USA Really, according to an FAN video on the project. The video features shots of a USA Really office space adorned with an American flag, a Confederate flag, and a framed “Make America Great Again” poster of President Donald Trump.

When permits for USA Really’s White House rally were denied because the group had applied to the wrong D.C. office, it scheduled a different event featuring Malkevich moderating a roundtable discussion. The discussion will take place this Friday at USA Really’s offices at a space across the street from the White House.

Employees at the website referred questions to Malkevich, who did not respond to inquiries.

Though it failed to come to fruition, the proposed rally was a brazen move for a group linked to more surreptitious elements of the Kremlin’s U.S. propaganda efforts. According to security researchers, the FAN has ties to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the Russian social media office that the Justice Department indicted in February for its role in Kremlin efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The FAN once operated out of the same St. Petersburg office building as the IRA, and the news agency took part in a scheme to discredit a New York Times reporter by attempting to link him to Russian neo-Nazis ahead of a Times expose on the IRA.