2 months ago 25

State Dept's Attack on Rybar Proves Popular Milblog is Doing Something Right - Founder

The US State Department has offered money from its 'Rewards for Justice' program for information about persons connected to Rybar LLC - an explosively popular Russian military blog platform accused of election-related "disinformation" operations in the US. Sputnik asked Rybar founder Mikhail Zvinchuk what the witch-hunt is really about.

The State Department’s offer of up to $10 million for information “leading to the identification or location” of foreign nationals connected to Rybar is really recognition of Rybar's media pull, Mikhail Zvinchuk says.

Last week, the US government singled out Rybar on the Rewards for Justice program's official website, and released a bizarre series of low-budget Wheel of Fortune-style YouTube clips featuring AI-generated voiceovers about the project's alleged malign activities.

Accusing Rybar of managing a number of "propaganda social media channels" to "promote Russian government political interests in the United States," and of trying to "exploit the issue of undocumented immigrants crossing the Texas border, a politically and socially sensitive topic," the State Department charged the social media news service with an array of crimes, from 'sowing discord and division' to stoking "partisan and racial discord," and even "encourag[ing] hate and violence in the United States."

Saying he and his colleagues found the YouTube videos amusing, Zvinchuk told Sputnik that he was somewhat "surprised" about the use of the Rewards for Justice program to target Rybar, given that it ordinarily revolves around the search for suspected terrorists - not media.

"RT was slapped with sanctions, its activities recognized as 'undesirable', etc., but Rybar - which had absolutely nothing to do with Texas, and with the American agenda in principle, or with foreign projects in the United States, got put on the same list as terrorists. This is probably some measure of success," the milblogger said.

Emma Rousseau of Oakland, N.J., her mouth bound with a red, white and blue netting, attends a rally on the Fourth of July to protest for abortion rights, at Lafayette Park in front of the White House in Washington, Monday, July 4, 2022 - Sputnik International, 1920, 16.10.2024

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"Perhaps we are being prevented from growing in the US because American authorities understand that if we’ve managed to organize our work in Europe, Ukraine and other countries well – if we touch the US (which we don’t really even care about), perhaps the US will face some difficulties. Seeing us as a potential threat, they’ve decided to be proactive,” Zvinchuk suggested.

“Rybar set the task for itself of providing high-quality coverage of issues in the information space, primarily concerning geopolitical challenges facing Russia, as well as quality coverage of crisis-stricken regions of the world. And since both the Americans and the British have a hand igniting these crises in one way or another, and we engage in the systematic monitoring of what is happening around Russia…it’s likely that the reason [for the State Department's action] was the high-quality processing of information by our analytical team, by our analytical center, of these threats,” the blogger said, pointing out that such timely analyses help the Russian state combat these challenges.

Pointing to Rybar's popularity and use as a source even in the Western information space - extending even beyond the reach of official Russian media on the crisis in Ukraine, Zvinchuk said the project's success comes down to its "approach to working with information...since we are not constrained by certain restrictions and write what we see," with Rybar's analysts becoming "visible thought leaders conveying a point of view different from the Western one, and that of some other news agencies."

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The reason for the crackdown ahead of the upcoming election in the US also obvious, in Zvinchuk's mind.

"Declaring a hunt on us and our project, the State Department's primary goal, it seems to me, is simply to blame our talented Russian team for its own failures and blunders amid the election campaign; because there have been quite a few violations related to elections, and public disputes and skirmishes between Democrats and Republicans are huge. What could they do in this situation? They couldn't say that their own political and media strategists are not doing their job. So, they blame everything on the Russians...RT has already been banned, and now it’s the turn of others who, it would seem, did not cross anyone’s path, but perhaps, on the contrary, simply by virtue of their existence, have become a target,” Zvinchuk summed up.