Russian Active Measures. Группа авторов

to Spin?” RT, 10 October 2015, https://www.rt.com/op-ed/318181-rt-budget-down-msm/ (accessed 20 May 2020).

8 “RT—Washington Bureau,” Russian American Magazine, 20 May 2020, https://russianamericanmagazine.com/directory/listing/rt-washington-bureau (accessed 20 May 2020).

9 See Sergei Bagapsh’s commentary of Pavel Sheremet’s text “Ataka otchaianiia,” Ogoniok, no. 33, 17 August 2008, p. 10; also available at https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2301243 (accessed 20 May 2020); Elena Ponomariova, “Abkhaziia i Iuzhnaia Osetiia: Budushchee otnoshenii s Gruziei,” MGIMO Universitet, 5 December 2009, https://mgimo.ru/about/news/experts/129314/ (accessed 20 May 2020); The Head of the Investigative Committee A. I. Bastrykin’s interview to the journal “Oriientir,” Sledstvennyi Komitet Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 31 August 2009, https://sledcom.ru/press/interview/item/507343/?print=1 (accessed 20 May 2020); “V Iuzhnoi Osetii prokhodiat pamiatnyie meropriiatiia,” RT, 8 August 2013, https://russian.rt.com/article/13693 (accessed 20 May 2020).

10 Peter Lavelle is an American journalist who since 1997 is based in Moscow. He was hired by RT in 2005, and a participant of the Valdai Discussion Club, where the Russian political elite meet with domestic and foreign journalists and scholars. For more details about the Valdai Discussion Club, see “Valdai Club Foundation,” Valdai Discussion Club, 2020, https://valdaiclub.com/about/valdai/ (accessed 20 May 2020).

11 Daphne Skillen, Freedom of Speech in Russia: Politics and Media from Gorbachev to Putin (London, U.K.: Routledge, 2016), 296.

12 “Airways Wobbly—Russia Today Goes Mad,” The Economist, 6 July 2010; see also Herpen, Putin’s Propaganda Machine, 73.

13 Michael K. Lavers, “Washington Post Publishes Pro-Russian Supplement,” Washington Blade, 16 October 2013, https://www.washingtonblade.com/2013/10/16/washington-post-publishes-pro-russia-supplement/ (accessed 20 May 2020).

14 For an explanation of this hypothesis, see Elihu Katz, “The Two-Step Flow of Communication: An Up-To-Date Report on an Hypothesis,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 21, no. 1 (1957): 61–78.

15 See Russia Beyond’s official site, 2020, https://www.rbth.com/ (accessed 20 May 2020).

16 Frédérique Roussel, “Russie-Soir,” Libération, 17 February 2011.

17 The National Front, known after June 2018 as National Rally (French: Rassemblement national), is a right-wing populist and nationalist political party in France.

18 See, for instance, Anna Politkovskaya, Putin’s Russia, 1st ed. (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2007).

19 Evgeny Morozov, “What Do They Teach at the ‘Kremlin’s School of Bloggers’?,” Foreign Policy, 26 May 2009, https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/05/26/what-do-they-teach-at-the-kremlins-school-of-bloggers/ (accessed 20 May 2020).

20 “Een hoofdredactionele reflectie op het artikel over Vladimir Poetin,” De Correspondent, 22 August 2014, https://decorrespondent.nl/1626/een-hoofdredactionele-reflectie-op-het-artikel-over-vladimir-poetin/41674380-3b47ac5a (accessed 20 May 2020).

21 For a discussion about trolls, see Peter N. Tanchak, “The Invisible Front: Russia, Trolls, and the Information War against Ukraine,” in Revolution and War in Contemporary Ukraine: The Challenge of Change, ed. Olga Bertelsen (Stuttgart, Germany: ibidem-Verlag/Columbia University Press, 2017), 253–81.

22 Takashi Inoue, Public Relations in Hyper-globalization: Essential Relationship Management—Japan Perspective, 1st ed. (London, U.K.: Routledge, 2018).

23 D. D. Guttenplan, “Critics Worry about Influence of Chinese Institutes on U.S. Campuses,” The New York Times, 4 March 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/us/critics-worry-about-influence-of-chinese-institutes-on-us-campuses.html (accessed 20 May 2020).

24 The Guillaume affair is one of the most well-known espionage scandals in Germany during the Cold War. The exposure of Günter Guillaume revealed that he was an East German Stasi spy who was working as a close aide to the first Social Democratic Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt. After Guillaume’s arrest in 1974, Brandt resigned. The Stasi was the secret service of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR).

25 Willy Brandt, Begegnungen und Einsichten: Die Jahre 1960–1975 (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1976), 586.

26 Rajeev Syal, “PM’s Tennis Match with Wife of Former Putin Minister Will Go Ahead, Say Tories,” The Guardian, 31 July 2014.

27 Greg Miller and Adam Entous, “Declassified Report Says Putin ‘Ordered’ Effort to Undermine Faith in U.S. Election and Help Trump,” The Washington Post, 6 January 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/intelligence-chiefs-expected-in-new-york-to-brief-trump-on-russian-hacking/2017/01/06/5f591416-d41a-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html (accessed 20 May 2020).

28 Rebecca Savransky, “Poll: Political Identity Largely Affects Belief in Conspiracies,” The Hill, 27 December 2016, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/311949-poll-belief-in-conspiracies-largely-depends-on-political-identity (accessed 20 May 2020).

29 “Facebook Data Gathered by Cambridge Analytica Accessed from Russia, Says MP,” The Guardian, 18 July 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/18/facebook-data-gathered-by-cambridge-analytica-accessed-from-russia-says-mp-damian-collins (accessed 20 May 2020).

30 Caroline Wheeler, Richard Kerbaj, and Tom Harper, “Revealed: The Russia Report,” The Times, 17 November 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/revealed-the-russia-report-kz6c9mwxf?ni-statuscode=acsaz-307 (accessed 20 May 2020).

31 Oscar López-Fonseca and Fernando J. Pérez, “Spain’s High Court Opens Investigation into Russian Spying Unit in Catalonia,” El País, 21 November 2019, https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/11/21/inenglish/1574324886_989244.html (accessed 20 May 2020).

32 Rajkaran