U.S. government legal actions targeting a network of Russian influence last week have exposed shortcomings in the country's laws designed to tackle the malign influence of foreign agents, experts told the Kyiv Independent.

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The U.S. Justice Department indicted Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, two RT employees, on charges of violating foreign agent and money laundering laws for funding a news network out of a Tennessee LLC called Tenet Media. The outlet funded a roster of “independent” U.S. social media figures known for commentary critical of NATO and Western support for Ukraine.

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As with many of the sanctions that the U.S. has put out against Russians over the past two and a half years, they don't mean much more than an annoyance for the sanctioned.

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Not for the first time, there are mixed messages emanating from the Kremlin. The Russian president said he supports Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, while the Kremlin’s extensive propaganda machine is apparently very much behind Donald Trump.

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Putin's comments, delivered with a wry smile, are at odds with multiple reports and intelligence assessments that have concluded Russia's propaganda machine has backed Trump since the 2016 U.S. presidential election and is working to help him get reelected this fall.

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For a better understanding of the Kremlin's hopes for the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, a more accurate picture can be gleaned from looking at Russia's state propaganda operations.

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A shadow world of secret wealth now threatens us all. We need to shut it down, argues Anne Applebaum

Kleptocracy, in its modern form, began in the 1990s. Multiple accounts of Vladimir Putin’s rise to power have shown, for example, how even as deputy mayor of St Petersburg at that time he presided over schemes to steal money from the state, to launder it abroad and then bring it back into Russia, all with the help of European partners. Although Putin has spent his life as a civil servant, he has used his stolen money, and the stolen money hoarded by his inner circle, as a source of power and influence ever since.

Since the 1990s, the kleptocratic model created in Russia has spread much further. From Angola to Zimbabwe, dictators with access to hidden sources of wealth are better able to resist demands for political change. They can hide their families and their property abroad. They can finance bribery and influence operations. The aura of secrecy they build is also part of what keeps them in power. Ordinary Russians, ordinary Chinese or ordinary Venezuelans are not allowed to know why their rulers, and their rulers’ friends and their families, are billionaires, because they’re not meant to have any influence or understanding or knowledge of politics at all. That lack of knowledge creates a sense of helplessness, apathy, even despair.

The rise of kleptocratic autocracies has affected the democratic world too, shaping it in unseen ways.

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It was a breaking news alert to lift the spirits and make the heart sing. A tech billionaire arrested as he stepped off his private jet and detained by the French authorities. Happy days!

Because while the UK police have been charging individuals who incited violence online during this summer’s riots, the man who helped to fuel its flames – Elon Musk – has simply tweeted his way through it.

It turned out – because you can’t have it all – that the man arrested and subsequently charged in France this week was not Elon. It was his bro-in-arms, Pavel Durov, an Elon-alike who founded the encrypted messaging app Telegram, though for the casual observer it can be hard to tell where Durov ends and Musk begins.

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Because just as history is told by the winners, here’s the thing about owning your own global speech platform: you get to control whose speech is heard. And in Musk’s case, that means him. He gets to tell the story. He controls the narrative. And he has already broadcast his version of Durov’s arrest and the court proceedings in Brazil to his 196 million followers. He is the ultimate arbiter of “truth”.

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Why would a leader who has proclaimed demography to be one of the most serious threats to a nation’s future launch an unprovoked war against a neighboring country that was a significant source of labor before 2014? We may never be able to answer this. We can conclude that Putin has turned a daunting crisis into a cataclysm.