Margaritaville

Few Kremlin shills have been as ferocious or as impactful as Simonyan, who has spent the past two decades demonising the West, lying about Ukraine, and fanatically defending Vladimir Putin at every turn, and her rumoured departure, if confirmed, could have existential implications for the network. 

At a lavish reception held at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre to mark RT’s 20th anniversary last month, Putin himself heaped praise on Simonyan, praising her resilience in the face of what he described as Western-led efforts to muzzle the controversial broadcaster, while also acknowledging the “difficult period” she has been going through following her recent breast cancer diagnosis and the death of her propagandist film director husband Tigran Keosayan in September. 

Handpicked by Putin at the age of 25 to head up Russia’s response to an international media landscape he saw as dominated by the Anglosphere, Simonyan can be credited with bringing about the network’s early success, launching its wildly popular Arabic- and Spanish-language news channels, becoming a five-time international Emmy finalist, and at one point being the most-watched news channel on YouTube.

Hailing from a blue-collar, ethnic Armenian household in Russia’s North Caucasus and not attending a prestigious Moscow university, unlike most rising stars in Putin’s Russia, Simonyan had to work hard for her seat at the table in a country where one’s career trajectory is built on personal connections rather than individual merit.

It was during Simonyan’s time as a member of the Kremlin press pool in the early 2000s that she got to know Putin’s then-spokesperson Alexey Gromov, who would go on to found RT in an effort to recalibrate the image of Russia being painted internationally. The choice of Simonyan to lead the new broadcaster in 2005 was in no small part due to her Kremlin-friendly reporting on the Beslan school siege the year before, in which some 334 people were killed in a botched storming of the building by Russian special forces.

Another factor that gave Simonyan an edge over her rivals was the year she spent as a high-school exchange student in New Hampshire, which gave her first-hand experience of life in the West and thus greater authority to push anti-American narratives. 

Time spent living in the United States has similarly helped fellow Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov excel as a regime mouthpiece since returning to Russia, and it was on his prime time chat show in September that Simonyan chose to announce the news of her recent cancer diagnosis.

Whereas Solovyov routinely draws on his experience of living and working in Alabama during the 1990s to dispel the notion that he harbours any resentment toward the American people, thus allowing him to establish an ideological kinship with like-minded MAGA conservatives, Simonyan’s biggest takeaway from her time in the US was its deplorable education system and the “ill-informed” youth it churns out as a result.

Ever since Putin launched Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, RT’s original mission to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on global information streams” has taken a backseat to establishing the network as the voice of the Global South in a time of rapid geopolitical change. 

Simonyan’s approach to the war in Ukraine has involved shamelessly misrepresenting the high regard some in Ukraine have for the country’s problematic 20th century independence leader Stepan Bandera as evidence of the country’s “neo-Nazi problem”, actions fed by her own conviction that, whatever happens on the battlefield, Russia must not be allowed to lose control of the narrative, as happened during Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia. 

Despite an EU investigation confirming that former Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili provoked the five-day war in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Simonyan has expressed her frustration that Russia is still seen as the aggressor in Georgia by those in the West, something she has admitted RT should have done more to address at the time.

Simonyan’s talent and slavish devotion to laundering the Kremlin’s international reputation has meant that Dmitry Kiselyov, the CEO of RT’s parent company Rossiya Segodnya, has never given much thought to nurturing a successor should she ever stand down, and an obvious heir has yet to emerge.

Indeed, in the two decades since the network was founded, the role of running RT has become a far less enviable one, with anybody taking over the reins at this juncture likely to find themselves sanctioned by the West, having a target painted on their back by the Security Service of Ukraine, and even being indicted by the International Criminal Court for actively supporting the invasion of Ukraine and the crimes against humanity being committed there in Moscow’s name.

As Russia continues to boost its year-on-year military expenditure having yet to show any readiness to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine in good faith, RT’s soft power projection will require further belt-tightening. Moreover, and by virtue of Russia’s current political isolation on the global stage, trips abroad taken by Simonyan’s eventual heir will be confined to RT’s target markets in the Global South as opposed to the Euro-Atlantic region. 

Should bipartisan legislation designating Russia a State Sponsor of Terrorism become US law, RT will find itself on the Financial Action Task Force’s blacklist and thus unable to pay its overseas staff. Needless to say, such a bold move would make life that much harder for any eventual successor to Simonyan.

When Simonyan does finally leave RT, Western governments should see her departure as an opportunity to further tighten the screws on the broadcaster as a source of Russian propaganda and dangerous disinformation until the Kremlin finally concludes that it is no longer commercially viable to keep the channel operational.