Banned Russian Channel RT Secretly Pays Video Bloggers Who Promote Kremlin Narratives

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the state-controlled international news channel RT has all but disappeared from Western screens.

The European Union banned the outlet, formerly known as Russia Today, in a matter of days, describing it as “essential and instrumental” in promoting the war. In the United States, RT was dropped from streaming platforms, its YouTube channel was blocked, and its local service shut down. Eventually RT was sanctioned by the U.S. government, and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, blocked its accounts as well.

But the outlet’s efforts to promote pro-Russian material in the West have continued. A new investigation by iStories, OCCRP’s Russian partner in exile, has identified several supposedly independent influencers who have received funds from RT.

On their channels, these influencers push the Kremlin line on Ukraine, glorify the Russian military, and deny Russian war crimes. Another common theme is actively promoting the idea of Westerners moving to Russia for its “traditional values.” None have publicly disclosed any relationship with RT.

RT has been accused of similar tactics before. In September 2024, two of its employees were indicted in the U.S. for allegedly financing an American company that paid right-wing influencers millions of dollars to promote a pro-Russian agenda. The company closed, and the RT employees — presumably in Russia — are unlikely to ever face a U.S. court.

In response to a request for comment from Reuters at the time, RT ridiculed the indictment: “Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and RT's interference in the U.S. elections,” it told reporters.

The channel did not respond to requests for comment about iStories’ new reporting.

“The traditional goal of propaganda is to attract ‘useful idiots’ into your camp,” says Anna Fenko, an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam's Faculty of Social Sciences. “Attracting them is cheaper than, for example, bribing politicians. You don't need to spend millions. A few bloggers will cost a few pennies. Then they [RT] hope to influence politicians in this way.”

The Kremlin's narratives about traditional values and anti-migrant rhetoric are designed to take advantage of discontent in the West, Fenko says. “For those who don't like migrants, they will produce content about how there are many migrants in Europe, but everything is fine in Russia.”

“You can't convince a person who is doing well to support Putin. But a person who feels wronged by his own government, unrepresented by the media — such a person will listen to this propaganda.”

"I'm Doing a Great Job"

Real Reporter, a YouTube channel with nearly 300,000 subscribers, promises viewers “authentic, balanced, and unbiased content” in a polarized world.

Registered in late March 2022 — a month after the Russian invasion — it began as a sort of Russia-focused travel blog, showcasing the extreme winters in the country’s far northeastern regions.

In one of his first videos from April 2022, the channel’s affable host Konstantin Rozhkov, who speaks perfect English with a barely-discernible accent, uses frozen fruit and vegetables to hammer nails into a board. This, he explains, is how cold it is in Siberia.

Soon enough, however, Rozhkov began to produce more political content. Among other topics, his videos have highlighted Russia’s growing economy, pointed out the ineffectiveness of Western sanctions, and featured foreigners from across the world who have moved to Russia for a better life.

One of his latest videos — ‘Why Russian Women Are Taking Up Arms’ — profiles a group of women, “trained by Wagner fighters,” who have organized in support of the invasion of Ukraine.

The video has attracted well over 2,000 enthusiastic comments, many from foreign viewers. “Thank you for showing the complexity of the Russian people and not imposing stereotypes,” writes one commenter. “I hate this war,” writes another. “And I love the Russian people. I pray President Trump will stop it.”

So who is Konstantin Rozhkov? A few months after launching his channel, the blogger released a video about himself. Sitting down in front of the camera, he explained that he spent over a decade covering international news for various Russian TV channels before getting a job with RT’s documentary division — thanks in part to his excellent English, which he perfected by working as a waiter in Florida.

Soon, he said, he realized he wanted to make his own content, and left the television business for YouTube.

In the video, Rozhkov insists on his independence: “Some people claimed in the comment section that this channel is Kremlin propaganda, some people say it's CIA propaganda,” he says. “The fact that I manage to piss off commentators on both sides of the political spectrum, well, for me it means I’m doing a great job.”

Yet  iStories found that Rozhkov continued to receive money from RT well after launching Real Reporter — a fact he does not mention to his subscribers.

According to Russian tax data obtained by reporters, he kept receiving payments from ANO TV-Novosti, RT’s parent corporation, at least through 2023.

In 2022 and 2023 — years during which Rozhkov published at least three dozen Real Reporter videos — RT paid him 15.7 million rubles ($181,600 at today’s exchange rate), according to the data, which was provided by a source with access to official tax records.

As it turns out, some of the very first videos published on Rozhkov’s channel used RT material. The video with the frozen fruit and vegetables, as well as another video from an even more distant northern city, featured excerpts from two RT documentaries, with the channel’s logo simply replaced by the Real Reporter logo.

After reporters sent Rozhkov a request for comment, the videos were removed from his channel. He did not respond to questions about his work. 

A Russian Road for Foreigners

“Russia is the bomb!”

“5 Reasons I’m STAYING in RUSSIA.”

“American war veteran found his happiness in Siberia.”

These are some of the videos on Russian Road, a reincarnation of an earlier YouTube channel called Russian Code that had over 70,000 subscribers when it was blocked in the summer of 2024.

Russian Road has rebuilt its subscriber base to just over two thousand, though it has another 10,400 followers on TikTok and 26,100 on Instagram.

Every video on the channel shares the story of a foreigner who moved to Russia: a Japanese ballerina pursuing the “world's best ballet school,” an Englishman who “has come to believe that it is not Russia but the UK that is a dangerous country,” and a large Catholic family that "fled the U.S.” because “the new agenda in the West no longer aligns with their faith.”

In a video published last August, an American blogger named Tofurious Crane says he moved to Russia in 2023 after the FBI allegedly pursued him for filming the storming of the Capitol in Washington DC on January 6, 2021. Reporters were unable to independently confirm his story.

“I will never go back,” he says. “I cried when I got off the plane [in Russia].”

Crane has also appeared in documentaries for RT’s documentary division, Rt.Doc, including one in which he travelled to occupied eastern Ukraine with Russian military correspondents while donning a cap featuring the pro-war ‘Z’ insignia.

Though it does not disclose any affiliation with RT, reporters found that RT employees are among the producers of the Russian Road channel.

When a reporter approached one of the channel's subjects and asked to be connected with a producer, they were given a number that belongs to Artem Vorobey.

Vorobey has been working for RT for the past several years. He is listed on the channel’s website as the author of multiple RT.Doc documentary films.

Asking another Russian Road subject for a contact, reporters were given the Telegram handle of another member of the production team, Pavel Baidikov. This documentary filmmaker from Omsk has been working for RT for 18 years.

Vorobey did not respond to a request for comment. Baidikov picked up the phone, but declined to answer questions about his work.

Welcome to Russia

Both Real Reporter and Russian Road fit into the Kremlin's campaign to attract immigrants from the West.

In August 2024, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on “providing humanitarian support” to foreigners who “share traditional Russian spiritual and moral values” and want to move to the country.

The decree is aimed at the citizens of 47 countries that, in the view of the Russian government, “impose destructive neoliberal ideological attitudes.” These include the United States, Canada, and countries belonging to the EU, with the exception of Hungary and Slovakia, whose governments are favorably disposed to the Kremlin.

Those wanting to take part can bypass certain immigration rules, such as the requirement to pass a Russian language test. But they must sign an application confirming that their “motive for moving to Russia is the rejection of the policy implemented by the state of [their] citizenship.”

The face of the campaign is Maria Butina, who is now a Russian legislator but was once best known outside of the country for her conviction as an unregistered foreign agent in the United States. (She pleaded guilty to felony conspiracy charges and served time in prison before being deported.)

Last year, Butina began hosting a new RT series, “Russia is Family,” dedicated to people who have decided to relocate from the West. She also founded a non-profit organization called Welcome to Russia that supports foreigners who want to make the move.

The organization’s other co-founders are all foreigners. Among them is Austrian entrepreneur Martin Held, who appeared alongside Butina in a November 2024 press conference announcing the initiative.

In a recent interview on Spas, a TV channel associated with the Russian Orthodox Church, Held explained that he is involved in this effort because he considers Russia a place of opportunity for educated foreigners. “I see Russia as the country where my daughters will grow up,” he said. “Here, in Russia, we have a great future.”

“The changes of the last few years, when the military operation started, also showed me that it's absolutely the right decision to be on Russia's side,” he emphasized.

Among Held’s projects is a website called VPN Tester that provides tools and information to help circumvent media blockages, explicitly citing “politicians in Europe” who try to “prevent the public from forming independent opinions.” The site also offers a streaming portal for German-language RT videos as a way of bypassing “blocks that have been put in place in the EU.”

On its transparency page, the VPN Tester site explains that it earns no income and is sponsored by Geroy, a Russian software and technology company co-owned by Held and his Russian wife.

But a source with access to Russian government databases provided reporters with bank transaction records for Fancy Nerds, the Russian company owned by Held that runs VPN Tester.

The transaction data available to reporters, which covers the years 2023 and 2024, does not show Fancy Nerds receiving any payments from Geroy.

In fact, it shows only one significant source of income: During those years, Fancy Nerds received a total of about 45 million rubles ($520,000 at today’s exchange rate) from ANO TV Novosti, RT’s parent company.

Despite Held’s professed disdain for the views of his former countrymen — “If I’m going to live in Russia, why should I care what Austrians think?” he says in an interview — he has retained ties to his home country.

Reporters from Der Standard and Paper Trail Media, who collaborated with iStories on this investigation, found that Held’s Russian wife purchased a home in Wiener Neustadt, a city near Vienna, for 498,000 euros in April 2024.

When reporters arrived there to try to speak with him, they met his wife, who was behind the wheel of a black Tesla. She confirmed that her husband lived at the house but said he could not talk, closing the gate behind her.

In reply to a request for comment, Held vehemently denied that Fancy Nerds had received any money from RT, suggesting that the transaction records obtained by reporters could have been falsified. “Such statements are the result of the current intense media war, which is closely linked to the real war,” he wrote.

(Reporters checked the Fancy Nerds bank transaction records against its publicly available financial data from 2023. The company’s declared turnover for the year matches the amount it received from RT.)

Held also said that he is not living in Austria, and that his wife’s purchase of the home near Vienna was her own financial decision in which he was “demonstrably not involved.”

“I occasionally travel to Austria for a few days, mainly to visit family,” he wrote. “My main place of residence has been in Russia for many years — even before 2022 — and nothing has changed in this regard.”

Another Influencer is Paid

The Fancy Nerds transaction records also show that, in 2023 and 2024, the company transferred about 600,000 rubles ($7,000) to another pro-Kremlin influencer: Alina Lipp, one of the other co-founders of Butina’s Welcome to Russia organization.

Lipp, whose mother is German and father is Russian, lives in Russia and has Russian citizenship. She runs a German-language Telegram channel with over 180,000 subscribers in which she has supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine since its early days.

In one of its annual reports, the Bavarian office of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency calls Lipp a “pro-Putin propagandist.” Following the Kremlin line, she has justified the full-scale war as the "denazification of Ukraine,” referred to Ukrainians as “Ukro-Nazis,” and repeated the Kremlin narrative that the Russian massacre of civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha was a “provocation by the Kyiv regime.”

In Germany, Lipp has been investigated for “rewarding and condoning crimes” committed by the Russian military. (According to prosecutors who spoke to reporters from German public broadcaster ARD, the investigation has been suspended “because the accused is not currently in Germany.”)

When reached by reporters, Lipp confirmed that she had received money from Held's company, explaining that in this way Held was helping her transfer donations from her German Telegram subscribers to a Russian account.

“My subscribers want to support me, and they send me money in euros,” she said. “And [Held] gets them in Europe and sends me rubles. That’s it. And that’s how I work. I pay taxes, everything as it’s supposed to be.”

Asked about the payments to Lipp, Held confirmed a “cooperative collaboration” with her, but said that the payments were for Lipp’s work as a production assistant and contradicted her claims that he had been helping her collect donations: “Neither we nor any other person known to me have accepted funds for Alina Lipp or other persons in order to transfer them to Russia,” he wrote.

Everyone Meets Russia

Aside from money, other opportunities offered to pro-Russian influencers in Russia include organized trips around the country to provide material for their online content.

Reporters found groups of bloggers publishing similar stories from such trips on three occasions this year alone, including visits to Kaluga for the Malnesitsa holiday and the New Jerusalem Monastery near Moscow for Epiphany, and a meeting with foreign families considering moving to Russia in the Ivanovo oblast.

Among the participants on all three trips was Alexandra Jost, a 26-year-old Russian-American who, under the name “Sasha Meets Russia,” publishes positive stories about the country to over 220,000 subscribers on Instagram and 165,000 on TikTok.

Jost’s YouTube channel was blocked last summer, but she immediately reopened it under a slightly different name, “Sasha and Russia,” adding a defiant message under her first video: “It seems like any positive video about Russia is labelled as propaganda. But, as we all know, Russians don’t give up! And I will not be silenced.”

Though much of Jost’s material features light-hearted cultural and touristic content, the Kremlin’s favorite anti-western narratives also make appearances. In one interview, she explained that she had moved to Russia because it has traditional values, no “gender agenda,” and offered an escape from Western Russophobia.

In another, Jost complained about a trip to Europe: “I admit, I had gotten out of the habit of seeing the ugliness of aging men in pink thongs walking arm-in-arm with others like them right on the street. … I couldn’t wait to get back to Russia.”

As previously reported by Novaya Gazeta Europe, Jost also receives funding from RT, which she has never disclosed. Reporters from iStories have obtained a document showing that her payments averaged 170,000 rubles ($2,000) per month in the first three quarters of 2024. Jost did not respond to requests for comment.

On occasion, she and her fellow RT-supported influencers have covered the same story. In May 2024, Jost published a video covering a display of dozens of “war trophy” Western tanks, captured during the war, in Moscow’s Victory Park.

Lipp, “Russian Code,” and “Real Reporter” all covered the display as well. It became one of Real Reporter’s most successful videos, gathering 3.7 million views.

With reporting by Daniel Laufer (Paper Trail Media), Laurin Lorenz (der Standard), and Hannes Munziger (Paper Trail Media).