"The State Department extremely dislikes alternative sources of information": the Russian embassy responded to the US report on "propaganda"

The report of the Center for Global Engagement under the US State Department on the “pillars of Russian disinformation” is aimed at “drowning” official proposals from Moscow to resume cooperation with Washington. So the Russian embassy in the United States commented on the document published the day before.

"The above report is an attempt to stifle the official Russian proposals for the resumption of cooperation in key areas on which the security of the whole world depends," the embassy said.

The diplomats also called on Russian and foreign media outlets that "dare to criticize the United States" to remember that they will almost certainly "become the subject of close scrutiny," and their resources on American social networks may simply be blocked without explanation.

“The State Department hates the existence of alternative sources of information. Serious resources are involved to discredit them. Any voice that contradicts Washington is declared “disinformation” in the service of the “Kremlin” and the Russian special services, ”the Russian embassy noted.

Also, employees of the diplomatic mission pointed out the absurdity in the presented report. For example, the LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the private radio station Says Moscow were in the category of "official government communications".

"If this is the pinnacle of the whole structure, which our American colleagues have built so carefully, then it looks more like a house of cards," Russian diplomats stated.

The press service of the embassy also advised State Department officials to subscribe to the official accounts of the Kremlin, the government and the Russian Foreign Ministry in order to "get official Russian information from them."

• U.S. Department of State Building
• Reuters
• © Joshua Roberts

On Wednesday, August 5, the US State Department's Center for Global Engagement released a special report. As part of this document, the "Russian ecosystem of disinformation and propaganda" was allegedly systematized.

“The ecosystem consists of five main points: official government communications, government-funded work to promote information around the world, cultivation of indirect means of influence, the use of social media as a weapon and the spread of disinformation through actions in cyberspace,” the report says.

The authors of the document argue that the Kremlin is "directly responsible" for the formation of these components, since the creation of the mentioned ecosystem is "part of its program to use information as a weapon."

As examples of disinformation, headlines are cited from both major Russian media outlets, including RIA Novosti, TASS, RT, and Sputnik, and lesser-known portals. At the same time, there is no evidence that the publications made are disinformation.

It also presents a scheme for the dissemination in the information space of news that COVID-19 could be created in the United States. At the same time, the authors of the report are silent that the top leadership of the United States directly accused Beijing of being involved in the emergence of the virus, and the media replicated this version, although American experts admitted at the end of April that SARS-CoV-2 was not artificially created in a laboratory and was not genetically modified.

We add that on July 30, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, at a congressional hearing, requested $ 138 million in the budget for next year for the work of the Center for Global Engagement, which is engaged in the "fight against disinformation and propaganda" on the part of Russia (more than twice the current level financing).

Against this background, the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai Patrushev said in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta that the anti-Russian propaganda used by the West repeats the methods that were once used in Nazi Germany.

“Internet censorship and modern Western propaganda technologies, including anti-Russian ones, sometimes repeat Goebbels’s tricks,” he stressed.

"US propaganda works exactly as described in the report"

According to the chairman of the Federation Council committee on international affairs, Konstantin Kosachev, the State Department's report perfectly accurately describes the scheme for using information technology, but it is used by Washington.

“It is the Americans who work all over the world in order to ensure their own domination, in order to change the situation in other countries in their favor, not shying away from any methods, including those that go beyond the framework of international law. But they attribute such actions over and over again to Russia, "said the interlocutor of RT.

According to him, Russia, unlike the United States, does not set itself the task of global domination or change the internal situation in another state in its favor.

“All this is exclusively the American logic of action,” added Kosachev.

In turn, the head of the Union of Journalists of Russia Vladimir Solovyov also noted that in the report published by the structure of the State Department, the words “RF” should be replaced with “USA”.

“Their most powerful system of state propaganda works exactly as described in the report, and interferes in the internal affairs of not only Russia, but all countries of the world in the most shameless way. At the same time, they are trying to define certain things in the Russian media in this way. But this is not surprising, because a lot of money is allocated for this so-called "struggle". And their spending must somehow be justified. Apparently, this is one of those formats for which this dedicated resource is spent, "said the interlocutor of RT.