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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the indictments as “nonsense.”

He accused the United States of repressing journalists to quash a “truth” that it did not like. “This is not the first time that Russia has been blamed for interfering into America’s elections,” Peskov said in a message answering questions from The Washington Post. “Well of course it’s nonsense. We’re not interfering.”

“Our media are doing their job. They’re just reporting. They’re reporting the truth, but unfortunately Americans do not like uncomfortable truth for them, and should it appear, they immediately implement repressions against it. This is the reality.”

Peskov’s statement comes against a backdrop of Russia’s own practice of jailing journalists, dissidents, activists and ordinary citizens posting about the war in Ukraine or criticizing the regime.

As Peskov denied election interference, President Vladimir Putin claimed to be supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in the race — despite the revelations from one of the indictments and a related set of charges that linked Russia’s efforts to supporting the Republican Party in the election.

“We had Biden as a favorite, but he was dropped from the race. He recommended that all his supporters should back Harris, so we will, too,” Putin said at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East.

Harris “has such an infectious laugh that it says she’s doing well,” Putin said, adding that as a result she might refrain from sanctioning Russia.

The Justice Department on Wednesday unsealed a 32-page federal indictment accusing the two RT employees, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, of conducting a money-laundering operation that spent nearly $10 million on efforts to covertly influence American public opinion, notably blaming Ukraine for the war with Russia.

In a separate legal action, U.S. prosecutors seized 32 Russian-controlled internet domains that were used in a state-controlled operation called “Doppelganger” to undermine international support for Ukraine and promote its preferred outcome in the U.S. presidential election.

The 277-page indictment over the Doppelganger campaign contains documents previously reported on by The Washington Post. The documents show that Kremlin first deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko directed a network of political strategists to promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions to undermine support for Ukraine.

The indictment includes additional documents by the same political strategists clearly showing the Kremlin campaign aims to bolster support for Moscow’s preferred political party, redacted as “U.S. Political Party A.” The earlier documents reported on by The Post make clear that this is the Republican Party.

One, titled “The Good Old USA Project,” states that the goal is “to secure victory of U.S. Political Party A candidate (Candidate A or one of his current internal party opponents) at the US Presidential elections to be held in November of 2024.”

The Treasury and State departments on Wednesday also announced sanctions on Russian individuals and entities it accused of “malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 U.S. presidential election.” Among them was one of the Kremlin’s most prominent propagandists, RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan.

Peskov said Russia would develop retaliatory measures in response to the sanctioning of Russian state media. He said the measures could not be symmetrical but that decisions would be made soon regarding the spread of U.S. media news in Russia.

Russia’s foreign propaganda and disinformation operations play an increasing important role in Putin’s efforts to rebuild Russia as a great global power, amplifying divisions in the West and winning support in the Global South where pro-Kremlin narratives have gained significant traction. A key objective of the operations has been to weaken military support for Ukraine.

Another of the documents in the Doppelganger indictment lays out the Kremlin strategists’ plans to create a “U.S. Social Media Influencers Network” that would give explicit support for the Republican Party and some of its members’ stances questioning assistance for Ukraine.

“The U.S. Political Party A is currently advancing a relatively pro-Russian agenda. That could be exploited by posing as ardent U.S. Political Party A and relaying the part of their agenda that coincides with ours,” the document states. “One example would be the financial and military support to Ukraine.”

Since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian officials from Putin down have spoken openly of an “information war” being waged between Russia and the West, while denying interference in the politics of foreign countries.

But a 2019 report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III found that Russia launched an information war that included interference in the 2016 elections to boost Trump’s candidacy, and efforts have continued to spread Kremlin propaganda narratives that sow doubt and disinformation in the West.

In sanctioning Simonyan and others, the Treasury Department described her as “a central figure in Russian government malign influence efforts.”

When the news broke, Simonyan posted on Telegram: “Oh. They woke me up!” She followed up with another post, “Great work, team.”

Despite Kremlin denials of interference, Simonyan has frequently boasted on state television about RT’s ongoing efforts to sow pro-Kremlin narratives in the United States. Peskov did not answer a question on the apparent contradiction between the Kremlin’s position and Simonyan’s statements.

In a March interview, Simonyan described how RT created hundreds of information outlets, opening new ones whenever U.S. authorities shuttered them, in what she called an “information war.”

“We create many sources of information that are not tied to us. While the CIA tries to figure out that they’re tied to us, they already have an enormous audience. Sometimes they find them and close them down,” she said.

“It happens with us that you wake up in the morning and 600 channels are gone, immediately. But while they’re closing them, we’ve already made new ones. This is how we chase each other. It’s even fun.”

“War is not fun, but with an information war you can have fun,” she added, laughing heartily.

In a January interview she said it was “too optimistic” to hope that the United States was on the edge of a civil war or social collapse, adding that Russia has to face the prospect of America leading the world “like an elephant in a china shop” for many years to come.

“We, without question, have seriously destabilized this china shop. I mean this ridiculous, illogical, egotistical and unjust world order that has existed since 1991 after the disintegration of the Soviet Union,” she said referring to Russia’s view of U.S. global hegemony.

David Nakamura contributed to this report

CNN
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The community of Winder, Georgia, is grieving two students and two teachers who were killed in a shooting at Apalachee High School Wednesday. It’s the deadliest of 45 school shootings so far this year. Here’s the latest:

Live updates: The latest on the Georgia high school shooting

• Authorities arrest 14-year-old suspect: Colt Gray, a 14-year-old Apalachee High student accused of being the shooter, is in custody, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference. He will be charged with murder and will be handled as an adult, Hosey and Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith said.It was not immediately clear when Gray would make his first court appearance, but it will be “within a reasonable amount of time,” Hosey said.

• Authorities identify four killed: Hosey identified the four killed in Wednesday’s shooting as 14-year-old Mason Schermerhorn, 14-year-old Christian Angulo, 39-year-old Richard Aspinwall and 53-year-old Christina Irimie. The school’s website shows the two adults were both math teachers and Aspinwall was also an assistant football coach.

• Nine others injured: Nine other people – eight students and one teacher – were taken to hospitals with injuries, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. All of those wounded are expected to recover.

• How the shooting unfolded: Authorities said the first report of an active shooter came in at 10:20 a.m. Law enforcement arrived shortly after, Hosey said, in addition to two school resource officers who were assigned to Apalachee High. The gunfire sent students and faculty desperately scurrying for cover as schools across the county went into lockdown and parents scrambled for information. A school resource deputy confronted the shooter, who got on the ground and was taken into custody, Smith told reporters.

• AR-platform weapon used in shooting: The weapon used in the shooting was an AR-platform weapon, Hosey said. A law enforcement official earlier told CNN it was an AR-15-style rifle, but did not provide any information on how investigators believe the weapon was obtained or any other details on the weapon and ammunition used. Authorities are investigating how the weapon was brought into the school. “We’re still trying to clarify a lot of the timeline from the time that he got here to school today until the incident,” Hosey said.

• High school had received a phone threat: The high school had received an earlier phone threat, multiple law enforcement officials told CNN. The phone call Wednesday morning warned there would be shootings at five schools, and that Apalachee would be the first. It is not known who placed the call.

• County schools went into lockdown: All schools in the Barrow County School System, which includes the high school, were placed on lockdown and police were sent out of an abundance of caution to all district high schools, according to the sources, but there were no reports of secondary incidents or scenes.

• Government officials react to shooting: Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp directed all available state resources to assist at the scene, he said in a statement on social media. The governor urged “all Georgians to join my family in praying for the safety of those in our classrooms, both in Barrow County and across the state.” President Joe Biden offered federal support to state and local officials and called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. “We cannot continue to accept this as normal,” he said in a statement. General Merrick Garland said the US Department of Justice “stands ready” to support the community after the shooting. “We are still gathering information, but the FBI and ATF are on the scene, working with state, local and federal partners,” Garland said at a meeting of the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force.

• Local schools shutter after shooting: Schools in Barrow County will be closed the rest of the week while the investigation plays out. The Barrow County School System is the 24th largest school district in the state, per the district’s website. It serves about 15,340 students, 1,932 of whom are enrolled at Apalachee High School. Winder, which is about an hour northeast of Atlanta, had a population of about 18,338 as of the 2020 census, according to the US Census Bureau.

• How it compares to past school shootings: Of the 45 school shootings this year, 32 have been reported on K-12 campuses and 13 on university and college campuses. The US has suffered at least 385 mass shootings so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which, like CNN, defines mass shootings as those in which four or more victims are shot. That’s an average of more than 1.5 mass shootings every day.

The suspect, a 14-year-old student at Apalachee, was questioned by law enforcement last year regarding “anonymous tips about online threats to commit a school shooting,” according to a joint statement from FBI Atlanta and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office. He denied making the threats online, the agencies said.

The online threats included photographs of guns, the statement said.

“The father stated he had hunting guns in the house, but the subject did not have
unsupervised access to them,” the statement said.

The agencies added that “at that time, there was no probable cause for arrest or to take any additional law enforcement action on the local, state, or federal levels.”

Investigators have spoken to the suspect and have been in touch with his family, Smith said. It was not immediately known whether the assailant had some connection with his victims, the sheriff said, though officials stressed that will be part of the investigation.

One student, Lyela Sayarath, said the suspect left the classroom at the beginning of their Algebra 1 class around 9:45 a.m. When the suspect returned near the end of the class, he knocked to get back in. Another student went to open the door, but Lyela said they noticed the gun and didn’t open the door. She said the shooter went to the classroom next door and opened fire.

Hosey said there’s no evidence of other schools being targeted, but investigators are pursuing “any leads of any potential associates of the shooter that was involved in this incident.” There’s also no evidence that any additional shooter was involved, and no evidence of a list of schools being targeted.

“However, there is a lot of evidence that is being recovered and evaluated,” Hosey added.

As law enforcement investigates the shooting and motive behind it, Smith warned that it could take “multiple days” to get answers.

Kemp thanked first responders and other officials who responded to the shooting Wednesday.

“This is everybody’s worst nightmare and I just want to offer my sincere condolences and our thoughts and prayers to the families that have lost loved ones, for those that are injured and continuing to fight through just a tragic time,” Kemp said.

Hosey called the faculty and staff at the high school “heroes” that took action to protect students.

“The heroes that we need to remember is our faculty and staff here at this school,” Hosey said. “They acted admirably. They were heroes in the actions that they took. The protocols in this school and this system activated today prevented this from being a much larger tragedy than what we had here today so I want to recognize them.”

Kathrine Maldonado overslept Wednesday and missed school, she said. After she woke up later that morning, her friend texted her saying the school was in a lockdown.

Kathrine’s friend said she was okay and then started texting group chats, where they found out that a friend was killed and at least two more were injured.

“When I found out I started crying, and I just got mad, because why would you shoot innocent people,” Kathrine said.

Kathrine said her friend Christian, who died in the shooting, was known as a class clown and described him as a “sweet person.”

Other Apalachee High School students said they were still processing Wednesday’s tragedy.

“It’s been pretty difficult because like a lot happened in kind of a short period of time,” Jayden Finch told CNN. “It was kind of hard to process it.”

Another student, 14-year-old Macey Right, said she is worried about returning to school.

“I really don’t want to go back; I feel like I shouldn’t have to go back to school worrying about dying,” Right said. “I want to go to school worrying about what my GPA is going to be when my year is over and worrying about my career.”

CNN’s Isabel Rosales, John Miller, Nick Valencia, Dakin Andone, Sharif Paget, Elise Hammond, Maureen Chowdhury, Tori B. Powell, Nouran Salahieh and Amir Vera contributed to this report.