Company Backed by J.D. Vance Gives Platform for Russian Propaganda

An interview of captive Americans done under duress appears on a web platform backed by J.D. Vance and Peter Thiel.

In June, two American veterans fighting as volunteers in Ukraine, Alex Drueke and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, were captured by Russian forces. They were taken to a black site where they were beaten, run into walls with bags over their heads and hooked up to a car battery and electrocuted, the men said after being freed in late September.

Between beatings, they told The New York Times, they were interviewed on Russian media outlets, including RT, one of the Kremlins primary propaganda organs in the West.

They stayed away from our faces because they knew that we were going to be on camera, that they were going to try and use this for propaganda., Mr. Drueke said. So they wanted our faces to look OK. But they took care of our bodies pretty good.

RT had been largely taken off the air in the United States and banned by the European Union in March after Russian President Vladimir V. Putins armies invaded Ukraine. But in June, its version of the captives story appeared on Rumble, a video-sharing platform that stepped in this year and began carrying RTs live feed, in addition to its clips. There, a glum-looking Mr. Huynh says they joined the fight in Ukraine after being duped by propaganda from the West that Russian forces were indiscriminately killing civilians.