In addition to directly buying political influence, Russia under Putin has played a long game of cultural influence.
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The United States has often touted the importance of winning the hearts and minds of our opponents. From Radio Free America to pamphlet dropping in Iraq, the US has taken overt actions to influence the opinions of our opponents (and also our allies), to say nothing of the covert actions taken through the CIA for the same purpose.
David Shimer’s 2020 book Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference presents an excellent historical account of the times Russia and the US have waged political warfare in proxy states, much as European generals waged shooting wars through proxy states in the Baltics in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The big difference now is that, in addition to the proxy sites, Russia has brought the political and information wars home to US soil.
To all appearances, the US is losing — badly — this latest round of information warfare, specifically with respect to the much-needed military aid to Ukraine currently held up in Congress by Republicans now nominally led by aspiring theocrat Mike Johnson but more than ever at Donald Trump’s beck and call.
This article confines itself to recent indications of Russian interference, including those that have drawn less coverage, such as Russia’s growing influence through religion. But to view these in appropriate context requires at least a brief mention of such familiar ground as the Mueller report’s finding of sweeping Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential campaign. That report also detailed how Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had deep ties to Russian oligarchs, while a subsequent Senate report focused on his ties to Russian intelligence.
Both these subjects, worthy of books to themselves, have been substantially detailed elsewhere. The extent of Trump’s business ties to Russia and the huge amount of money funneled to his campaign by Russia through the NRA are also well trodden territory.
But honing in on the last two years, we can see that Russia is now exerting various forms of influence around the world aimed at reducing resistance to its military invasion of Ukraine, including the sending of money and arms to the embattled nation.
A Global Influence Offensive
Because the operations are largely covert, and their theater global, the evidence isn’t all conveniently laid out in one place like the transcript of a Trump phone call. Rather the pieces have to be painstakingly uncovered and pieced together to show the shocking extent of Russia’s international influence campaign. But each fact we are aware of is a brick and when there are enough of them we can begin to discern the edifice they make up.
To start, the Biden administration is seeking to declassify information about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latter-day efforts. For instance, in 2022 the State Department said Russia had spent $300 million since 2014 to influence politicians in over a dozen countries.
We also know that state TV in Russia dropped lavish praise on Johnson and celebrated his rise to speaker of the House. Additionally Johnson (among other Republicans from Texas and Louisiana) received money in 2018 from a Russian-owned corporation, which he was forced to return when even the traditionally toothless FEC found it a violation.
A federal grand jury in Florida returned an indictment in April 2023 charging three Russian nationals and four American citizens with conspiracy to malignly influence American politics, specifically by spreading Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine. The former chief of counterintelligence in the FBI’s New York field office was convicted and sentenced to prison for espionage and conspiracy.
The Venn diagram of the Christian Evangelical base and the MAGA movement would show so much overlap as to be close to a single circle. So Putin’s putative influence over America’s evangelical political movement translates to control over the most fervent GOP voters and local leaders.
A Different Sort of Bully Pulpit
In addition to directly buying political influence, Russia under Putin has played a long game of cultural influence. Aspiring autocrats have known the power of religion since England’s Henry VIII started his own and Napoleon threw the pope in jail. Since 2010, Putin has been vying to make Russia the center of the global Christian Right.
The Christian evangelical movement has accumulated ever-increasing influence over the Republican Party from the 1950’s onward. Consider the warning from far-right presidential candidate Barry Goldwater: “If and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] Party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem.”
The Venn diagram of the Christian evangelical base and the MAGA movement would show so much overlap as to approach a single circle. So Putin’s putative influence over America’s evangelical political movement translates to control over the most fervent GOP voters and local leaders.
The World Congress of Families, a pillar of the modern US religious Right, is described by Politico writer Casey Michel as a creation of joint Russian and American “homophobic ingenuity.” The WCF was created by two Russian sociology professors and its current American leader. The organization exerted influence on Russia as well, basically crafting its anti-abortion laws from the experience of conservative religious groups in the US and Europe.
In 2012 Putin achieved the goals of many American religious conservatives by removing all separation between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church. Data shows this approach has borne fruit, in that approval of Putin is significantly higher among those in the US who sympathize with Christian nationalism.
The lack of separation between the Russian church and the Kremlin means that Russia can exert influence in Eastern European countries that have ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, such as Latvia, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.
The GOP’s Assignment
Aid to Ukraine has actually become a wedge issue between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the younger leaders of the GOP. McConnell unequivocally supports aid to Ukraine while Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who is tightly tied to Trump (well known for his unstinting praise of Putin), and others in that camp are determined to cut or end military aid to Ukraine.
Another issue in the information war between Russia and the US is the GOP’s sabotage of a defense network against foreign propaganda. After the 2020 election, the GOP brought lawsuits preventing the US government from informing social media platforms about propaganda so that these companies could be on the lookout for specific types of disinformation.
Experts warn this makes the US extremely vulnerable to foreign interference in the 2024 election. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said, “We are seeing a potential scenario where all the major improvements in identifying, threat-sharing, and public exposure of foreign malign influence activity targeting US elections have been systematically undermined.”
Retiring Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) said, “I understand we don’t want to interdict constitutionally protected speech, but what is constitutionally protected speech? Certainly foreign agents don’t have constitutionally protected speech because they’re not subject to our Constitution. I presume bots don’t have constitutionally protected speech. American citizens do.”
Microsoft predicts Iran, China, and Russia will all make efforts to interfere in the 2024 election.
It’s an overstatement to say that Putin wields direct control over the 2024 GOP. It is not an overstatement to say that Trump does so. And there is good reason to believe that Putin does wield significant influence over Trump.
The GOP self-sabotage of US defenses echoes Trump saying, in the aftermath of the 2016 election, that he was going to work with Putin to make our elections more secure against foreign interference. While there is no smoking gun proving Trump or the GOP’s collusion with Russia in the last few election cycles, the decision to dismantle any protection by intelligence agencies against foreign propaganda is exactly what a party would do if it wanted to embrace such interference.
It’s an overstatement to say that Putin wields direct control over the 2024 GOP. It is not an overstatement to say that Trump does so. And there is good reason to believe that Putin does wield significant influence over Trump.
With Putin thus increasingly calling the shots — directly and indirectly — in Washington and capitals around the world, freedom and democracy are, domestically and globally, in the crosshairs of aspiring autocrats and theocrats in this crucial year in which more than half the planet’s population will, in elections of varying degrees of freedom and fairness, choose their leaders. This is not the World War III many of us have envisioned. It is the one we are called upon to fight.
Doug Ecks is an attorney and a writer. He holds a JD from the University of California, Hastings and a BA in philosophy from California State University, Long Beach, Phi Beta Kappa. He also writes and performs comedy as Doug X.
