They worked for the Putin regime’s propaganda machine, but since the start of the war in Ukraine, their world has been turned upside down. Some quit in protest. Others have left for undisclosed reasons, or they have gone silent and their status is unclear.
At least 50 Irish media professionals are thought to have worked for RT, the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. They have been presenters, reporters, producers, video verification editors and website writers.
They include the Moscow-based Carlow journalist Bryan MacDonald, who was sanctioned by the British government on May 4. As head of the Russian and former Soviet Union desk for RT.com, he is accused of being “a member of, or associated with, a person involved in destabilising Ukraine or obtaining a benefit from or supporting the Government of Russia” by the UK’s office of financial sanctions implementation.
MacDonald, a former journalist with the Herald and Ireland on Sunday, has been a frequent commentator on Russian affairs, both on RT.com and on Eamon Dunphy’s podcast, The Stand.
RT, which was set up with the personal backing of president Vladimir Putin, has been used by Russia to create an alternative reality on TV and online that casts the country as a victim and the West as a global villain.
RT broadcasts 24 hours a day in English, French, German, Spanish, and Arabic and at one time claimed to have more than 700 million viewers. Following Russia’s invasion on February 24, it was barred from broadcasting on YouTube and other channels, and taken off air in Ireland, the UK and across Europe.
Putin may now be regarded as a pariah by the Irish government, but at one stage the authorities here were happy to play host to RT’s online media operation at the State-backed Digital Hub, a centre in Dublin’s Liberties. About 20 journalists and production staff worked at the office between its opening in 2015 and its closure in 2018.
The driving force behind the project was Ivor Crotty, a University College Cork sociology graduate who had emigrated to Russia in 2006. He is believed to have been the most senior Irish executive in the Kremlin’s media operation as head of social media.
At first glance, he may have seemed like an unlikely figure to rise to the top in RT after joining the service in 2009. Back in 2003, he worked for one of Putin’s greatest enemies, the billionaire financier George Soros, in Lviv in Ukraine.
After joining RT in 2009, Crotty appeared on the English-language channel and represented the station at publishing and social media conferences around the world.
In podcast interviews, the fast-talking Dubliner laid out the Russian viewpoint on a range of issues. On the London Real podcast in the early phases of the conflict in Ukraine in 2014, he said: “I honestly think it’s a war that is being taken to the East by the West.”
But in another interview with Ken Early on the Second Captains podcast, he admitted, when pressed, that the passing of a homophobic law in Russia and one decriminalising certain types of domestic violence made him feel uncomfortable. He likened his job with RT to working for Goldman Sachs.
A former Irish staffer said Crotty worked “very closely” with RT’s controversial editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan, who was handpicked in 2006, aged 25, by Putin to lead Russia Today, which changed its name to RT four years later.
“A lot of us who worked there did it purely because we needed a job and times were tough in the Irish media,” says the former RT journalist, who declined to be named. “Most of us kept our heads down and didn’t drink the Kremlin Kool-Aid propaganda.”
Another staff member in the Dublin operation defended RT’s output and said it was no more heavy-handed in imposing an editorial line than Western media organisations.
Staff seemed aware that is was perceived differently, however. One outside journalist who visited the Dublin offices said he was asked if he was wearing a wire.
A former RT Irish staffer in Moscow said they were told to have Irish left-wing politicians, such as Joe Higgins and Richard Boyd Barrett, on RT as guests to talk about how terrible austerity was for Ireland after the EU-IMF bailout.
“The ironic thing was that the austerity endured by the ordinary Russians was much worse, but we weren’t reporting on that or finding guests to talk about it,” said one former employee. “Ireland may have been in the toilet but we couldn’t talk about Russia being up to its knees in s***.”
Irish staff in the Moscow office said that there were at least two executives there who were widely believed to be working for the FSB, the successor to the KGB.
“These guys didn’t have much to do and sat around chatting and observing,” remembered a former RT journalist. “They were very friendly guys and loved to shoot the breeze and gossip.”
Crotty said RT was attracted to Dublin due to the low corporate taxes and proximity to US tech giants such as Facebook and Google.
The office had a news team, headed by Susan Ryan, and a video verification unit, which tried to ape the success of Mark Little’s Storyful. Crotty hired several employees from that company and Stephen Mangan, formerly of Reuters, to help run the unit.
In Moscow, one of the most recognisable faces among RT’s TV broadcasters is Eunan O’Neill from Crossmaglen in south Armagh. A graduate of the University of Ulster, he was hired to present the station’s sports coverage. He was elevated to the main anchor position after others resigned in protest against its coverage of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
Since the invasion, RT’s most prominent Irish journalist, Bryan MacDonald, has disappeared from Twitter and his RT column has not been appearing. As a result of the UK’s decision to sanction him, British citizens must now freeze any accounts, funds, or other economic resources, and refrain from dealing with him. Failure to comply is a criminal offence.
MacDonald first went to live in Russia in Khabarovsk, near the Chinese border, in the early 2010s. He worked as an English language teacher and it was there he met his future wife.
The couple moved back to Ireland but never settled. They relocated to Russia and tried to live in Moscow for a few weeks, where he hated it, before moving to Krasnodar in the south and then Sochi, a resort city on the Black Sea.
Moscow-based Carlow journalist Bryan MacDonald, who was sanctioned by the British government on May 4
He began working with RT towards the end of 2013 after writing an opinion column entitled ‘How do you solve A problem like Ukraine?’ before being taken on full-time.
He has run the Russia and former Soviet Union desk for RT.com and wrote commentary pieces for the website until the invasion. He also made a colourful appearance on the TV channel when he was interviewed in his home town of Carlow in 2013. MacDonald was presented as an interviewee who lived in Carlow in a report that portrayed the town as an urban wasteland, blighted by emigration and unemployment and filled with boarded-up shops.
From 2014, he has been a prolific writer of opinion pieces for RT’s website and appeared on podcasts to convey the Russian viewpoint.
As with much of its online output, MacDonald’s focus was less on glorifying Putin’s regime and more on criticising the West and Nato.
He also spoke of having the ear of Simonyan, who last month calmly suggested on TV that war in Ukraine “may end with a nuclear strike” and ignite World War Three.
Under his stewardship, RT’s Russia desk hired a string of Irish and British contributors to write opinion columns for its website.
MacDonald appeared to be working for RT up until recently, although his Twitter feed came to a halt a few hours after the invasion.
In one of his last tweets on the day of the invasion, he wrote: “I genuinely didn’t believe Russia would launch a full-scale military attack on Ukraine. Like most journalists, analysts & pundits based in Russia, I thought it was sabre-rattling or a bluff to force the West’s hand in negotiations. I apologise for getting it so badly wrong.”
In response to emails from the Irish Independent, he said this week that he had been unwell recently and was trying to recuperate.
Describing his move to the media operation, he said: “RT provided some Irish journalists with employment at a time when outlets in Dublin were either closing or downsizing.”
Asked why he had taken on such a prominent role, he said: “I was a journalist working at a news organisation. I ran a small desk of eight people. We covered Russia and the former Soviet space fairly, accurately and objectively.”
RT’s Dublin operation closed in 2018, apparently due to a lack of financing. Crotty and Mangan were given roles in Moscow and Berlin, respectively. Most staff were let go.
Crotty, who declined to speak to the Irish Independent this week, left RT in March.
RT also has a video agency based in Germany called Ruptly. Established in 2013 to provide news to RT and other customers, it provides video and live feeds from around the world.
Irishman Luke Holohan, who had worked for RT in Dublin, was one of many journalists in Berlin to resign from Ruptly on the day of the invasion.
RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan was said to have worked ‘very closely’ with Ivor Crotty. Photo by Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes my position as a verification journalist with the company completely untenable,” he tweeted. “I don’t agree with the Russian government’s actions. My thoughts are with the people caught up in the invasion. What else is there to say? This is completely wrong.”
Since the invasion, Mangan has disappeared from social media and is also believed to have resigned.
In the earlier years of RT, taking a job there might not have attracted much adverse attention, and employment there was tempting for jobseekers in a difficult media environment.
“At the time I moved there I made a judgement call, because I needed a job,” said one former RT editor. “That is not to say that I agreed with anything that Russia did. When I look back on it now, I regret it.”
