The style is one that is now widely recognized as a tool of sowing doubt: the author just asked ‘reasonable’ questions, without making any evidence-based conclusions.Who is the audience of this story and who could potentially be targeted by such content? As Bratich argued, 9/11 represents a prototypical case of ‘national dissensus’ among American individuals, and an apparently legitimate case for raising concerns about the transparency of the US authorities13. It is indicative that whoever designed the launch of RT US knew how polarizing it would be to ask questions about the most painful part of the recent past.

To begin with, the US output of RT tapped into the rich American culture of conspiracy theories by running a story entitled ‘911 questions to the US government about 9/11’

Instead, to counter US hegemonic narratives, the Kremlin took to systematically presenting alternative narratives and dissenting voices. Russia’s public diplomacy tool — the international television channel Russia Today — was rebranded as RT in 2009, probably to hide its clear links to the Russian government11. After an aggressive campaign to expand in English-, Spanish-, German- and French-speaking countries throughout the 2010s, the channel became the most visible source of Russia’s disinformation campaigns abroad. Analysis of its broadcasts shows the adoption of KGB approaches, as well as the use of novel tools provided by the global online environment