MOSCOW (Sputnik) — RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan on Thursday made fun of the Twitter microblogging service after it revealed the outlet spent thousands of dollars on US advertising campaigns, in a comment to Sputnik.
"Twitter has just unveiled horrendous information in Congress – that we’ve been spending money on our advertising campaigns, just like every media organization in the world," Margarita Simonyan said.
Twitter told the Senate on Thursday the campaigns cost RT a total of $274,100 last year. It also shared a "round-up of ads" that allegedly targeted the US market.
"This is forcing us to go a step further and come clean that we also spent money on advertising at airports, in taxis, on billboards, on the Internet, on TV and radio," Simonyan went on to say.
She added it had never crossed her mind that in a developed democracy media advertising could be considered "suspicious or detrimental activity."
"By the way, similar campaigns are conducted by the American media in the Russian segment of Twitter. It’ll be very interesting to find out how much they spend on it, who they target and for what purpose," Simonyan concluded.
Russia’s purported meddling to tilt the election in Donald Trump’s favor has been the focus of inquiries by Congress panels and US intelligence agencies, despite no solid evidence. Russia has denied any wrongdoing, saying the claims were an absurd attempt to deflect attention from important domestic matters.
