House GOP Candidates Posts Echo Moscow Touted Propaganda

In late May, Joe Kent, the GOP candidate for Congress in a crucial Washington toss-up district, posed a question on X (formerly Twitter):

“Ukraine is out of men, so their only option is to get NATO involved. What happens when Russia kills French troops in Ukraine?”

Enough foreign nationals have signed up to fight for the embattled European nation that there’s now an international legion in Ukraine. But no French combat troops ― or troops from any NATO country ― have been deployed there.

So why would Kent, a former Special Forces operator and foreign policy adviser in the Trump administration, ask such a question?

The timing of Kent’s post, at 3:37 p.m. Eastern time on May 27, came a little more than an hour after the subject of French boots on the ground was raised on a different social media app, the encrypted messaging app Telegram, by a pro-Kremlin feed.

“NATO Troops enter Ukraine after all,” read a post at 2:19 p.m. that day from a channel called Ukraine Watch. “The AFU commander-in-chief, Syrskyy, has signed a permit for French military instructors to work in training centres in Ukraine.”

(The memo signed was part of the effort to lay the groundwork for French trainers, but by itself did little, and the idea of sending trainers seemed to stall after national elections in July.)

Telegram allows users to send texts and videos between individuals, but also to sign up for feeds called “channels” that focus on specific subjects. Kent’s X post in May is just one example of many, spread throughout 2023 and 2024, in which he seems to directly echo posts from Ukraine Watch, a channel that has been held up by Russian officials as a reliable source of information about the war in Ukraine.

Kent has long been skeptical of the U.S. support for Ukraine and the Biden administration’s rationale for it ― a key difference between him and his opponent, Democratic first-term incumbent Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez.

Kent has gone so far as to offer conspiracy theories for events involving Russia and Ukraine, suggesting earlier this year that the CIA or Ukraine was involved in the attack by ISIS-K militants on a Moscow theater that left more than 140 people dead.

Gluesenkamp Perez and other Democrats have long held up Kent’s willingness to entertain such conspiracy theories as a key example of his extremism, and part of the reason why she was able to defeat him in a district in Western Washington former President Donald Trump won two years ago.

HuffPost asked Kent if he follows Ukraine Watch, his response to criticism he was parroting Russian propaganda points, and his response in general to the idea he was under the sway of Russian propaganda.

He replied via a public social media post, saying he merely wants to avoid the possibility of World War III.

“The huff post contacted me on 9/11 with some Russiagate nonsense. The dems have nothing to run on so their media lackeys are trying this slop once again,” he said.

“l fought for our nation for over 20 yrs. I want us to avoid wars that risk WW3.”

His opponent, Gluesenkamp Perez, said Kent’s Russia posts show he is out of touch.

“Joe Kent spends most of his time telling people how terrible America is, so it’s no shock that he’s been taking talking points and marching orders from Kremlin propaganda,” she said in a statement to HuffPost.

“The contrast in this race could not be clearer: Joe Kent surrounds himself with extremist kooks while I am focused on solving problems for the working people of Southwest Washington.”

Kent’s race, ranked as a toss-up by the Cook Political Report, may be crucial to control of the House ― and, with Ukraine expected to need more aid from Congress next year, potentially key to that conflict as well.

Kent lost by just under 3,000 votes in 2022 to Gluesenkamp Perez, out of almost 320,000 cast. A pro-Trump, Make America Great Again conservative, he’s running in a district that leans slightly Republican, according to Cook.

Trump, for his part, offered one of his starkest public statements yet on the war in Ukraine at the Sept. 10 presidential debate. Asked point-blank if he wanted Ukraine to win, Trump replied, “I want the war to stop.”

Two House Republican committee chairmen in April warned that Russian propaganda has found receptive ears among some in their party. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said it had “infected a good chunk of my party’s base,” an assessment echoed by House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio).

“We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor,” Turner said.

McCaul and Turner are two-thirds of a trio nicknamed “the Three Mikes” ― along with House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) ― that are still staunch Ukraine allies. Many Republican voters, though, appearing to take a signal from Trump, have soured on providing more aid to Ukraine.

A mid-August YouGov/Economist survey found 52% of Americans favored keeping military aid to Ukraine at the same levels or increasing it, compared to 28% who wanted to cut it. But among Republicans, 42% wanted to maintain or boost support while 44% wanted to decrease it.

One of the main arenas for Russian and Ukrainian information warfare is Telegram, a social messaging platform with 950 million users globally. It’s especially popular in Russia, Ukraine and Western Europe.

Since the war in Ukraine started in February 2022, researchers, journalists and others have received much of their day-to-day battlefield news from monitoring Telegram channels on both the Russian and Ukrainian sides.

Ukraine Watch, with 65,000 subscribers, touts itself as being “For Multipolar World.” But it has been publicly endorsed by the Russian government. Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s top diplomat at the United Nations, once held up a QR code leading to the channel at a U.N. Security Council meeting to encourage people to check it out.

In January, Kent posted on X what appears to be a screen recording from his computer or phone of an interview he did with right-wing FOX News pundit Jesse Watters. In the recorded clip, a Telegram message notification labeled “Ukraine Watch” pops up onscreen.

In addition to his post about French troops, Kent has in other instances posted about obscure issues in the Ukraine-Russia conflict or echoed posts made earlier in the day on Ukraine Watch.

• On March 26, 2023, at 11:01 a.m., a Ukraine Watch post detailed how much aid the U.S. had provided to Ukraine by that point and summarized the Pentagon’s new fiscal year 2024 budget request. It noted it included “$11 billion in hypersonics, $33.3 billion in space tech (more than ever before), and a high focus on ‘acute threat’ from Russia and support for Ukraine (as much as it will take).” At 11:59 a.m., Kent posted on X, “As our leaders click thru defense contractors catalogues for the next big arms package to Ukraine the CCP gobbles up strategic choke points & forms economic alliances that chip away at the dollar’s reserve currency status.”

• On March 23, 2023, at 7:10 a.m., Ukraine Watch posted a headline from a Bloomberg News article warning about a Chinese effort to broker a Ukraine peace deal. “Regardless of the US reservations, dismissing [the Chinese plan for peace] outright could let China argue to other nations that are weary of the war — and of the economic damage it’s wreaking — that Washington isn’t interested in peace,” the post said. At 8:43 a.m., Kent posted a link to the Bloomberg article, adding, “If the CCP brokers a cease fire in Ukraine, they are poised to take us down w/out firing a shot. Consolidation of the Eurasian economy, death of the petrodollar, control of manufacturing & shipping lanes = world leader & eventual reserve currency holder.”

• On March 21, 2023, at 5:15 p.m., Ukraine Watch posted a 14-second clip of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin greeting Chinese President Xi Jinping, along with several bullet points. One of the bullet points read: “Trade and economic cooperation between Russia and China is developing successfully, despite sanctions and turbulence in global markets.” At 1:48 p.m. that day, Kent posted a link to a video of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Xi signing “strategic cooperation” documents. “This is catastrophic. Biden’s war on US energy, weakness, corruption & prioritizing a border dispute in Ukraine over our vital national security interests got us to this point,” he wrote.

• On May 31, at 3:36 a.m., Ukraine Watch posted a picture of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of the House Republicans most critical of Ukraine aid. The channel said Gaetz had posted on X that “The White House risks provoking an even greater escalation and a third world war by allowing Ukraine to attack ‘targets’ in Russia.” At 1:55 p.m. that day, Kent posted a screenshot of a Politico article on the debate over whether to allow Ukraine to make long-range strikes into Russia. “Biden’s comments on the Trump trail & Gaza are a major diversion to prevent any discussion about Biden provoking WW3 by authorizing Ukraine to use U.S. weapons inside Russia. World wars have begun over far less, anyone pretending that we aren’t playing w/fire is lying to you,” Kent wrote.

• On June 12, at 9:09 a.m., Ukraine Watch posted a video from Russian outlet RIA Novosti showing a Russian ship entering a harbor in Havana, Cuba. At 1:40 p.m., Kent posted a video of a Russian submarine arriving at Havana, under the comment: “Russia’s deployment to Cuba & ops off the East Coast are a response to Biden authorizing Ukraine to fire U.S. missiles into Russia & 2 yrs of reckless escalation. We are closer to WW3 than anytime since the Cuban missile crisis.”

• On Aug. 5, at 10:25 a.m., Ukraine Watch posted a picture of former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, noting he was set to meet with a high-ranking Iranian army official. At 1:51 p.m., Kent posted a link to a video of the Shoigu meeting side by side with a picture of a U.S. military official meeting with an Israeli one. “We cannot get sucked into a foolish war w/Iran. China & Russia will only gain, we’ll only bleed resources desperately needed to protect our nation. Biden/Harris’s hubristic escalations, back by Dems like Perez in Congress made us weak & vulnerable,” Kent wrote.