“I mean Putin is a bad guy, but, like, a lot of people are bad guys. I mean he’s pragmatic.”

This is how Joe Kent, a former Green Beret and CIA operative running for Washington state’s 3rd congressional district, described Russian President Vladimir Putin on a podcast earlier this year.

Kent’s congressional race, a rematch between him and the district’s first Democratic representative in 12 years, is one of the most competitive in the nation. Last time, he lost by less than 3,000 votes. The Cook Political Report rates Kent's rematch against Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) as a "tossup."

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Kent — only a few months into his first run for office — described Putin’s demands to claim large parts of Ukrainian territory as “very reasonable.” Kent’s campaign has also received significant help from Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), one of the most Russia-friendly members of Congress. Through his Protecting Freedom PAC, Paul has provided nearly half a million dollars to support Kent’s candidacy.

Kent has echoed Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine throughout his campaign during hours of interviews on conservative news programs and podcasts reviewed by Popular Information. 

Meanwhile, according to an indictment unsealed by the Department of Justice last week, Russian operatives have been running a massive disinformation campaign to sow division and decrease support for Ukraine in the US. Part of this program included amplifying anti-Ukraine messages from conservative US politicians, candidates, and pundits on social media to increase support among American voters for policies favored by the Kremlin.  

Kent and Putin: Ukraine and Russia share one culture and language

The first piece of Russian propaganda that Kent has pushed is that Ukrainians and Russians are one people with one common history. 

On a podcast hosted by Sean Parnell in January 2024, Kent said, “Look, I don’t want America involved in the actual territorial dispute between Russia and Ukraine. I view that as an issue between two Slavic cousins. Like, they can figure out where those borders go.” 

Later on the podcast, Kent continued, “[Putin] understands all this and so like he’s never really had any aspirations to anything but unite the Russian speaking people. I mean, I’ll let the Russian speaking people hash that out on their own.”

Here, Kent referenced one of the most important myths that the Kremlin has used to justify its war in Ukraine. If Ukrainians are actually Russians who share Russian culture and language, then Russia is actually saving its own people by invading.

Several months before the 2022 invasion, Putin published an essay called “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” in which he claims that Ukrainians are actually Russians. The Kremlin has maintained this narrative.

In March 2024, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said, "One of Ukraine's former leaders said at some point that Ukraine is not Russia. That concept needs to disappear forever. Ukraine is definitely Russia. Historic parts of the country need to come home."

But this narrative is false. While Ukraine has been controlled by Russia at certain times, it has a history of its own dating back to the 9th century and has been independent since 1991. And although there are certain regions of Ukraine where Russian is spoken, Ukrainian is a distinct language and is highly favored as the country’s official language and the language of education. In fact, since the Russian invasion in 2022, the number of Ukrainians who believe that Russian should be allowed to be a second official language in certain regions has decreased.

Kent and Putin: NATO is responsible for Russian aggression

Kent has also frequently pushed the Russian narrative that Russia was provoked to invade Ukraine by the expansion of NATO to Eastern European countries close to its borders.

During the same podcast appearance in which Kent called Ukrainians “Russian-speaking people,” he also claimed that NATO is encroaching on Russia:

[T]he next president, and I pray it’s going to be President Trump, I think he’s gonna have to be very clear that we’re not for NATO expansion because that’s really what started this entire thing. We’ve had this mentality that we need to continue to add countries you know to the eastern flank, right on Russia’s border of NATO. And that was against the original designs of NATO.

Since the end of the Cold War, The Kremlin has used NATO expansion to justify its attacks in Ukraine. In December 2023, Putin said in a press conference, “We remember, as I have mentioned many times before and as you know very well, how you promised us in the 1990s that [NATO] would not move an inch to the East. You cheated us shamelessly: there have been five waves of NATO expansion.”

The promise that Putin referred to, however, was never actually made. During early negotiations for the re-unification of Germany at the end of the Cold War, the US informally proposed a ban on NATO expansion in exchange for Russia giving up its half of Germany. But this condition was not a part of the final negotiations.

Additionally, the most recent NATO expansions have been the result of Russian aggression, not the cause. When Finland and Sweden joined NATO in April 2023 and March 2024 respectively, they cited Russian aggression as the catalyst for joining after remaining neutral for so long.

Kent and Putin: The US should focus on its own problems

Another message promoted by Kent, which comes straight from Putin’s playbook, is that Ukraine should be none of America’s business. He made this point during an August 27 podcast:

I mean Ukraine, before this war, was our 65th trading partner. Most Americans couldn’t find Ukraine on a map and that’s not a ding on most Americans. They couldn’t find Ukraine on a map because it didn’t matter that much to America.

Roman Osadchuk, a research associate at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, pointed out that whether most Americans can find Ukraine on a map or not, the US still has an obligation to Ukraine — in the form of the Budapest Memorandum.

Signed in 1994, the Budapest Memorandum is an agreement between Ukraine, the US, and the UK that Ukraine would give up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for assurances that the other two countries would help Ukraine maintain its independence (although it did not specify exactly what such assistance would look like).

Kent is “actually mirroring the idea that Russians are spreading most of the time, which is that all other countries should spend time on their internal issues and not be involved in [the Russia-Ukraine war],” Osadchuk told Popular Information.

Heightening tensions over domestic politics in the US is one of the key priorities of the Russian propaganda campaign exposed by the DOJ last week. The scheme involved creating dozens of memes and other posts daily through social media accounts targeting conservative voters in all 50 states. The goal of such posts is to stoke fears about topics including the “threat of crime coming from people of color and immigrants (including new immigrants from Ukraine)” and “overspending on foreign policy [at] the expense of white US citizens.”

Kent and Putin: Western support for Ukraine could lead to World War 3

Russia and Kent both want the West to focus on internal issues instead of helping Ukraine. And they both warn that the consequences of Western aid to Ukraine will be disastrous.

During the August 27 podcast, Kent said, “So now we’re letting Biden unilaterally take us off to what would really be for all intents and purposes the start of World War 3 that potentially has a nuclear angle…The big question too is, like, it’s for what?”

According to Osadchuk, Russia ramps up its threats about global war whenever more aid from the West is being discussed. But so far there has been no follow through.

“So basically, they're trying to [say]... ‘oh, there would be World War Three if you would continue helping Ukraine.’ But every time, they back down. So every time when Ukraine asks for specific military equipment, Russia says that ‘if you give them [anything], it will be a huge red line.’ Then Ukraine receives it, and nothing happens,” Osadchuk said.

Russian propagandists have been hard at work stoking nuclear fears. In the affidavit released last week by the Department of Justice when it indicted two Russian propagandists for pumping disinformation into American right-wing media, one of the goals of this propaganda campaign was described as “the creating of a nuclear psychosis.” Russia wants the US to be afraid that helping Ukraine will provoke global war.

One cog in a disinformation machine

It is unclear why Joe Kent, a combat veteran and former US intelligence operative, has turned to Russian propaganda. When Popular Information asked his campaign, there was no response.

Whatever the reason and whether intentional or not, Osadchuk said that Kent’s rhetoric helps Russia.

People like Kent, according to Osadchuk, are influencers. Being a politician, candidate, or talking-head, some people “are effective at promoting some specific ideas to a number of people. So in that way, they are amplifying them, willingly or unwillingly,” he said.

Along with media influencers, candidates like Kent play an important role in Russian propaganda efforts, legitimizing their talking points. 

“What Russian then does with this is another important and interesting thing,” said Osadchuk. “They will point at this person and [say] ‘look, US politicians are certain that the US should not be helping Ukraine.’ They will write this in Russian, then [Russia Today] will translate it in English, and then it will be picked up again. So this is just a kind of feedback loop again and again.”