A propaganda video showing President Joe Biden singing in Russian while another person warns of interference in foreign elections has been circulated online.
The video shared by senior Ukrainian government official Anton Gerashchenko, purportedly aired by Russian state broadcaster RT, shows people celebrating as "Biden" sings "I'm Russian, and I'm lucky," apparently in the Oval Office.
In 2020, former President Donald Trump lost the election to Biden and continues to falsely claim it was stolen from him.
A new textbook for Russian students recently circulated on social media claims the Democrats committed voter fraud to win the 2020 election. Marc Bennetts, a foreign correspondent for U.K. newspaper The Times, posted an image of a textbook that contains the translation that Trump lost because of "obvious electoral fraud by the Democratic Party."
In the video, the fake Biden also says, "I'm Russian, and may the world go to hell," while he dances. Russian "scientists" are also seen dancing along with the "president's" song after the beginning of the video shows them supposedly controlling his hand movements.
Ticker tape rains down on the celebrating Russians before what is claimed to be RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan wishes viewers a Happy New Year, adding Russia will "Interfered, interfere and will continue to interfere" in elections.
Newsweek could not independently confirm that RT did in fact broadcast the video and has approached Simonyan through the outlet's website for comment.
"Next year will be interesting," the purported "voice" of Simonyan said.
In October, U.S. intelligence released a report saying Moscow is using a combination of social media, state-media and spies to try to reduce faith in democratic elections.
"Our information indicates that senior Russian government officials, including the Kremlin, see value in this type of influence operation and perceive it to be effective," the U.S. said in the report that was sent to 100 different countries.
Newsweek has approached the White House and the Russian government for comment.
The Department of Justice released a redacted version of the so-called "Mueller Report" by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller in 2019. It said the "Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion."
It added that "evidence of Russian government operations began to surface in mid-2016."
Previously, businessman and former leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, made comments on Russian social media platform VKontakte saying Russia had interfered in U.S. elections. "We are interfering and we will continue to interfere," he said in 2022.
Prigozhin, a former ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in August this year in a plane crash just two months after an armed munity by his troops against Russian military forces. The Kremlin has denied any involvement.
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Benjamin Lynch is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is U.S. politics and national affairs and he ... Read more
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