The U.S. Agency for Global Media still shows a press release about its poll in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine. Its faulty and misleading 2014 poll in Crimea violated Ukraine’s sovereignty and helped to reinforce Putin’s propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine and illegally occupied and annexed Crimea.

USAGM Watch Commentary

Vladimir Putin is an ex-KGB officer. The KGB and its successor agencies have targeted the West with propaganda and disinformation for decades. Today, Russia’s war on Ukraine U.S. government-funded reporting is in the hands of the dysfunctional U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). The agency is known for its lax security and multiple scandals in recent years. Its authority to conduct background checks on prospective employees has been revoked due to massive security violations.

In 2014, under its previous name, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the federal agency in charge of the Voice of America (VOA), conducted a faulty poll in Russian-occupied Crimea. BBG went to great lengths to report its misleading results obtained under the terror of the Russian occupation – something the BBG and the USAGM have failed to disclose. Independent experts in Ukraine, Russia, and the United States criticized the BBG poll and the way it was conducted.

A year earlier, in 2013, the then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress that the Broadcasting Board of Governors was “practically defunct” in its capacity to tell America’s message around the world. Since then, what is now the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the Voice of America have become even more dysfunctional and poorly managed. The U.S. Agency for Global Media still shows a press release about its poll in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine, as well as the results of its faulty U.S. government-funded research, which helped to reinforce Putin’s propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine and Crimea.