Inside the Russian Info War Machine

- The French president has just been elected.

He's hosting the Russian president for the first time.

And the event is tainted with suspicion.

- It's a world war of a new kind

with no guns and no bombs.

On one side, the West is seeing Russia as a rising threat.

On the other, Russia has lost half of its territory

since the collapse of the Soviet Union and feels attacked.

You are fighting for your country.

You are responsible for your country.

So from this point of view, all the ideas or means

or possibilities are welcome.

- The Russians are fighting with new weapons.

- They fuel influence peddlers

in European political parties.

During the elections,

trolls were very active online.

- And they even hired Yosemite Sam.

- You can't put together rubles with a political ad

and go like, hm, those two data points

spell out something bad.

- Senator, it's a signal we should have been alert to.

Yeah. (groans)

- It's hard to bring out proofs

as this army knows how to cover up its tracks.

- Well, it's not going to be easy.

In March, 2017 Russian President Vladimir Putin

hosts an official meeting with Marine Le Pen,

the National Front candidate at the Kremlin.

In six weeks, Marine Le Pen would come up

against Emmanuel Macron.

This handshake is historical.

It confers on Le Pen a presidential status.

- There it is for the cameras.

Vladimir Putin doesn't meddle with French politics.

The man who's worked the most towards an alliance

between the National Front and Russia

is Aymeric Chauprade.

He was the most influential foreign advisor

to Marine Le Pen.

He was nicknamed the National Front foreign minister.

Then he left the National Front, but he's still a member

of the European Parliament.

- The National Front and the Kremlin

have in common their hostility towards the European Union.

- And the National Front voters

are often avid admirers of Vladimir Putin.

- Among the National Front voters

quite a few are under the influence of the Russian Media,

Russia Today and Sputnik.

- RT and Sputnik reach few viewers

within the general public, but the French president

sees them as worrying nevertheless.

- Who's behind Russia Today and Sputnik?

Their headquarters are in Moscow

and they've agreed to let us in.

Russia Today is a TV channel, Sputnik is a website.

They're both accessible on the internet.

Their budget is comparable to that of Western channels.

More than 300 journalists in every language.

They opened a channel in Paris in December, 2017.

Their promise, to tell the untold and to question more.

Today in their breaking news,

a new development in the information war.

It's unfolding in Washington during

the Russian foreign affair minister's visit to the USA.

In your meeting with President Trump

did he raise US concerns about

Russian interference in the US elections?

As you know,

we've seen the US intelligence agencies

accuse Russia of interfering in the elections.

- Did Mr. Trump raise the question

of Russian interference in the US elections?

- I just said that President Trump

has stated publicly that these are all false stories.

Please do give us at least one fact and then we can react.

- The global director of RT and Sputnik

is Margarita Simonyan, a young, very powerful journalist.

In the network, her nickname is M.

She was trained in the US and is experienced

in all styles of modern media, including satire.

- Vladimir Putin created RT in 2005.

10 years later he triumphs.

- You celebrate the critical spirit,

the freedom of expression.

Could you be as critical against the Russian government

or against the Russian president?

When the President Putin

created this channel, what was the idea,

the mission that was given to you?

- We have a hard time understanding

each other because I thought that Russia Today, RT,

had an identity like telling the untold.

That's what you sell, and it's written everywhere

so actually it's just marketing.

It doesn't mean a thing, right?

- Question more is RT's motto,

but it is dangerous to question too much

for a journalist in Russia.

Alexey Kungurov, for example, an independent blogger

was sentenced to two years in prison

for having questioned the targets

of the Russian bombings in Syria.

Mr. Alexey Kungurov detained in Russia

is something that you could cover in RT and Sputnik?

This is what RT published

on the imprisoned Russian blogger.

A very short dispatch only in Russian.

No international versions.

- I don't think there's any blogger

in jail in the UK.

- There are bloggers in jail in the UK?

Like, you have one name?

You have one name?

- Of bloggers who are actually detained

in British jails? - Yeah, British jails.

- After we left, Margarita sent us an email

with around 10 names of young Brits.

We've checked the list.

They're not really bloggers.

They're people punished for having organized riots,

incited racial hatred, arrest, threatened with rape,

celebrated murders on Facebook or Twitter.

And no press coverage whatsoever, well,

apart from the BBC, The Guardian, The Mail on Sunday,

The Telegraph, The Independent,

basically the whole national press

and most of the local newspapers, too.

Welcome to the alternative truth.

Alexey Kovalev formally worked for Russian state media.

He was fired by Margarita Simonyan.

Ever since, he's been working for an independent newspaper.

- Russia doesn't really have an ideology to offer.

It doesn't have a concise, a cohering ideology

like the Soviet Union did.

So what is it offering is instead

due to these marginalized group

in the extreme left and right is that guys,

you are vilified by the establishment,

by the mainstream media.

It's a psychological effect.

It's called the hostile media effect.

- There's an information war.

Are you the main weapon for Russia in this war?

- In France, Emmanuel Macron's

campaign meetings sometimes look like a mass karaoke.

But there's one man who isn't singing.

In a few weeks he'll be minister.

But for now, Mounir Mahjoubi's job is to keep his head down

and focus on his smartphone.

- Mounir is keeping a very close eye

on the Russian media.

During Macron's campaign an outrageous article

has been published on Sputnik's English website.

The future French president could be an American agent.

An agent for the banks.

And the article hints with perfidy,

Macron is supported by a wealthy gay lobby group.

That says it all.

- We wanted to trace the rumor

back to its root.

Macron an American agent, or how a fake news is created.

One of the reasons why

we got this feeling about you being more aggressive

towards Mr. Macron than towards Ms. Le Pen

is like articles like this one.

A lot of controversy in France.