The U.S. Retreat from International Broadcasting is a Gift to Russia’s Disinformation Efforts

Russian officials rejoiced when the Trump administration took a wrecking ball to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) in early 2025. The two institutions were fundamental elements of America’s soft power, symbols of American generosity on the ground and commitment to the ideals of democracy.

What’s more, the Trump administration gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a gift. It asked nothing in return for kneecapping U.S. foreign aid and shutting off American communication to vast parts of the world. The United States didn’t ask Russia to rein in the state media outlets RT or the Sputnik news agency, which spread Russian propaganda across the globe, while Russia was left to continue its influence operations at scale, just with far less counter-messaging from the United States.

Russia even leveraged the fact that the U.S. institutions had been shut down for propaganda purposes. It declared that President Donald Trump’s actions validated what the Kremlin had claimed all along: that the real agenda of U.S. broadcasters and aid programs was to force liberal values on other nations and turn them against Russia.

“Even the Americans” now view USAID as “undesirable, indecent, and corrupt,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova. Margarita Simonyan of RT praised Trump’s “awesome decision” on U.S. broadcasting and said her staff was celebrating.

Russia could also celebrate the shutdown in April 2025 of the Global Engagement Center, the State Department unit devoted to working with allies to counter foreign disinformation.

Trump’s rout of U.S. soft power was devastating but not complete, at least not yet.

The State Department took over some of USAID’s humanitarian programs. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the U.S. broadcaster focusing on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, remained on the air with funds ordered by a court, but had to cut back staff and programming. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which funds pro-democracy activity worldwide, continued to stagger along after severe cuts to its budget.

However, damage to U.S. broadcasting overall and to America’s main foreign aid agency was shattering. In Moldova, where U.S. information outlets competed intensively with Russian media, the visibility of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty content on Romanian- and Russian-language search engines fell significantly. The United Kingdom, France, Germany, and other Western nations have international broadcasting services, but they fall well short of the 60-plus language services the United States offered. If the administration’s efforts to close RFE/RL succeed, there will be no Western broadcasting in several Eurasian and Eastern European languages.

Steve Lodge, son of the late Voice of America Capitol Hill correspondent Robert Lodge, protests budget cuts outside VOA headquarters in Washington, D.C., March 17, 2025. Photo by Andrew Leyden/NurPhoto via AP

What opportunities does this create for Russia?

First, the Kremlin will face less competition in the global information war. The U.S. broadcasters—which in fact did much of their work through websites, social networks and video clips—pushed back daily on Russian narratives. As president of RFE/RL from 2016 to 2018, my job was to keep our reporting reliable and honest. But we were committed to reporting on corruption and human rights—coverage that outraged authoritarian rulers in the countries we served.

Russia and its allies will also benefit from the likely disappearance of dozens of pro-democracy NGOs and news outlets that had been supported by USAID, NED, and U.S. embassies. USAID committed $16.8 billion to Eastern Europe and Eurasia in 2023, the vast majority of it for Ukraine but with significant amounts for Moldova, Georgia, and other countries heavily targeted by Russian propaganda.

The NGOs promoted good governance and civil society, battled corruption, and encouraged positive sentiments toward the United States. The news outlets held local politicians to account, exposed Russian influence operations, and monitored the integrity of elections—sometimes with important political impact. In late 2024, for example, an undercover investigation by the newspaper Ziarul de Garda, a USAID grantee, exposed vote-buying by pro-Russian interests in Moldova (see link for context). Its exposé, widely shared on social media, led to headlines across the country and a police investigation.

U.S. international broadcasters sometimes provided political cover for such investigative reporting. When local outlets feared an exposé could bring retaliation against them by government officials or corrupt businessmen, they sometimes shared their reporting with the U.S. networks and let them break the story first. This enabled local media to subsequently “back into” the story more safely. They might lead with the targets’ denial of wrongdoing, but then add additional information that further exposed the malfeasance.

But now, with the pro-democracy media ecosystem weakened, Russia and other authoritarian states in the region will likely seek to hijack its audience. They will expand their own media offerings to capture citizens looking for new outlets to follow. And they will seek to rewire the independent journalism funded and fostered for more than three decades by U.S. soft power.

Western programs, many supported by USAID, had been the gold standard in journalism training. They emphasized Western traditions of journalistic neutrality and objectivity, and they tutored reporters in investigative techniques that helped them uncover government corruption and other malfeasance. Now Russia will seek to take charge and impart its own idea of journalism. A new RT Academy opened in February 2024, offering seven free online courses for journalists with more than 100 how-to videos. The academy also has held on-site seminars in Indonesia, Mali, China, India, and Ethiopia.

RT describes Western training as aimed at imposing Western values and concerns on Global South media. A video promo for RT’s Africa course portrayed Western media as fixated on the “same narrative” of climate change, sanctions against Russia, and LGBTQ+ issues. In contrast, RT says its training shows more respect for local interests and sensibilities, offering an “alternative perspective” by concentrating on day-to-day African news and Russia’s role in the region. The curriculum at a pilot training session included showing how “famous news agencies like CNN, the BBC, and Deutsche Welle use fake news and spread this information worldwide.”

News anchor Eunan O’Neill at Russia Today’s Moscow office. Photo by Iliya Pitalev/Sputnik via AP, November 2017

The Sputnik news agency runs its own training program, SputnikPro, that it says has reached more than 10,000 participants from 80 countries.

Russia has also begun to penetrate the Western world of journalistic fact-checking. In 2024 three Russian organizations created the Global Fact-Checking Network, an unabashed effort to copy the long-established International Fact-Checking Network based in Florida. The goal: to unite fact-checkers “who share our views and values.” The Russian organization’s website highlights what it says are fake stories by Western news organizations.

As of November 2025 the Russian network claimed to consist of nearly 100 individuals and organizations from 50 countries, compared to the U.S.-based organization’s accreditation of more than 140 organizations from 65 countries.

This year Facebook cut back its financial support to fact-checking organizations, and Google decided not to feature fact checks with its search results. The two events had dealt a blow to fact-checkers even before the creation of the Russian competitor, which presumably will be supported with Kremlin money. As for the destruction of USAID, Russia will try to fill some of the void with its own assistance programs, though it faces a steep climb. Russia’s foreign aid, doled out by a variety of agencies, is estimated at about $1 billion a year—a far cry from USAID’s budget of $23 billion in 2024. However, Yevgeny Primakov, the head of one of the agencies, said in a July interview that Russia was designing “the next iteration” of Russian foreign aid with “a format analogous to USAID”—perhaps a single, larger agency with a higher international profile.

Russian aid does face obstacles. Russia has never been much inclined to the well-digging, seed-distributing work of development aid. Considering the substantial cost of aid programs, officials in Moscow might well ask what result more aid would bring that can’t be accomplished by propaganda, arms sales, and suborning foreign politicians.

It is early to judge the full effect of the Trump administration’s actions against USAID and the international broadcasters. Britain, France, Germany, the Nordic nations, and others have long contributed to pro-democracy NGOs and media outlets. The European Union and its member countries provide close to $100 billion in foreign aid annually, more than USAID did. But the loss of U.S. contributions will hurt, especially since some other Western countries have been reducing their foreign aid.

However, foreign funding of pro-democracy NGOs and media always had drawbacks for the recipients. They lived at constant risk of grants not being renewed. They were vulnerable to accusations by Putin, Hungary’s Victor Orbán, and others that they were carrying out the agendas of foreign nations. And the foreign funding made them targets of laws like those in Russia and Georgia, and threatened in Hungary, that severely restrict the activities of so-called “foreign agents.”

“The worldwide USAID scandal… has made it obvious that we should fully reclaim our country,” Mamuka Mdinaradze, chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party, said in February 2025, trying to justify the party’s own crackdown by citing Trump administration actions. Three months later, Georgia passed its “foreign agent” law, which foreign-supported NGOs and media saw as a threat to their existence.

Even when USAID, NED, and U.S. international broadcasting were running at full throttle, liberal democracy was precarious at best in many Eurasian countries. Think tank reports talked constantly of “democratic backsliding,” the successes of pro-Russia populists, and nostalgia for Soviet days. Millions of dollars were poured into economic aid and international broadcasting aimed at promoting Western-style freedoms and wariness of Russia.

Despite all that spending to promote democracy, the West held its breath repeatedly as voters went to the polls in Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Czechia, Georgia, and elsewhere. Sometimes they chose pro-Western leaders, sometimes politicians with sympathies to Moscow. In its 2025 annual report, the Washington-based human rights monitor Freedom House listed only five former members of the Soviet bloc as fully free: Romania, Bulgaria, and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

Perhaps the problem was not too little spending on aid of pro-democracy efforts, but rather that Russia and the West were playing two entirely different games. U.S. and European communicators advanced positive narratives: the benefits a given country had already reaped from its ties to the West, and the prospect of much more progress if the country ended corruption, adopted liberal ideals, and maintained a strong front against Russia.

Pro-Russian actors built their messages on grievance and cynicism, fueled by the persistent economic gulf between countries in the region and wealthy developed nations. They argued that further largesse from the West depended on giving visibility to LGBTQ+ communities and welcoming ever more impoverished migrants—moves many citizens strongly opposed. Pro-Russian personalities and Russia-friendly governments such as Georgia’s, also fanned fears that strong stances against Russia could lead to violent confrontation, perhaps making them into new Ukraines.

The West long prided itself on responding to Russian propaganda with “the facts.” In contrast, Russia’s messaging was highly emotional—not always on topic, but stiletto-like in its sarcasm and highly shareable on social media. Russia adapted its narratives to play on the long-standing prejudices and insecurities of the country at issue. Many felt Russian communication authentically reflected their sense of anger and injustice, while Western messages sounded like preaching from somewhere outside their reality.

Going forward, however, Russia faces a United States that is changing its game. Under Trump, Washington has spoken little about spreading democracy and liberal values. It has replaced these aims with an America First agenda that emphasizes trade, self-help, and conservative values. It sees populist parties in Europe as potential allies rather than a danger.

This course betrays decades of U.S. policy but also means Russia no longer will be able to pillory Washington for encouraging migrant rights or LGBTQ+ communities. The Trump administration’s attitudes open the way for the United States to build strength in the former Soviet world the same way Russia has done it: not with foreign aid, but by joining with local populists, questioning the worth of the EU, and building relationships on business rather than ideology.

Trump’s policies on aid and democracy deeply endanger America’s traditional allies in the post-Soviet world such as pro-democracy NGOs and independent news media. They have not lost faith that their countries can be both prosperous and liberally democratic. And they are led by people who have spent whole careers, and sometimes risked their lives, for such ideals—believing the United States had their back. The State Department is continuing some grants, but they are likely to be a small fraction of what USAID provided.

Smaller grants from European nations and new fundraising strategies might keep some of these organizations afloat. But given the stress from the sudden shutoff of U.S. assistance, they will struggle.

For the moment, Russia seems the clear winner from Trump’s moves against USAID and U.S. international broadcasting.◆

Thomas Kent is adjunct assistant professor of international and public affairs. He is the former president and CEO of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the senior fellow for strategic communications for the American Foreign Policy Council, and consults to governments and NGOs on Russian affairs and the world information war.

Featured photo: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky