The Russia House
Today I am announcing the launch of an exciting new project, The Russia House with Scott Ritter. This is a subscription based service using the social media platform Telegram.
The Russia House is a collaboration between myself and Alexandra Madornaya, a long-time senior administrator of my Telegram channel. Alexandra has, over the course of the past year, expanded her involvement in my efforts to combat Russophobia by editing a series of video “shorts” related to my past travels to Russia. She was scheduled to provide extensive video editing support for the visit to Russia I was planning in June-July 2024 that was aborted when the US government seized my passport on June 3, 2024. Her skill and judgment, when combined with her knowledge of Russia and dedication to the mission of improving US-Russian relations, make her the ideal partner for this project.
As currently structured, The Russia House will publish new content twice a week. On Tuesday there will be a topical article the content of which is unique to the project. And on Thursday an hour-long podcast will be published which includes commentary and an interview with a Russian subject matter expert related to the topic covered by the Tuesday article.
As the project grows, so too will the products we will offer, including the prospect of 90-minute documentaries derived in part from the interviews conducted as part of The Russia House project.
The Russia House with Scott Ritter represents a continuation of the important work of helping overcome the Russophobia that exists in the United States and the West which serves as an impediment to the furthering of better relations between Russia and the West. Its success, of course, hinges on the quality of the product published as part of this project. But quality production does not happen in a vacuum, and the sustainability of The Russia House will ultimately depend upon the creation and sustainment of a viable subscription base.
The Russia House with Scott Ritter will strive to provide unique, quality articles and interviews that are both timely and informative and incorporate high-quality production values. Alexandra and I welcome you to embark on this journey of discovery and together help overcome the intellectual corrosion brought on by the ignorance generated by Russophobia today.
I have been wrestling with the issue of Russophobia in the United States for some time now. As someone who cut his academic teeth studying Russian history in college, and who, at an early stage in my development as an adult had the opportunity to live and work in Russia during the Soviet era, I have a deep, yet admittedly incomplete, appreciation for Russian culture, language and history. This appreciation has empowered me to make informed judgments about Russia, its political leadership, and its people, especially when assessing the interactions between Russia and the United States today.
Void of this background, I would expect that I would be susceptible to the Russophobia emanating from the US government and echoed without question by a compliant mainstream American media. With it, I am able to see through the falsehoods and mischaracterizations that appear deliberately designed to warp the sensibilities and logic of Russophobia’s intended audience—the American people.
I wrote these words back in February 2023 in an article I posted on Substack, The Red Scare 2.0: Russophobia in America Today.
Little did I know that this article would trigger the Department of Justice to order the FBI to execute a search warrant of my home under the pretext that I was serving as a willing unregistered agent of Russia and, as such, in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA.
My crime?
Interviewing the Ambassador of Russia to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, and coordinating with his office to incorporate an article the Ambassador had written on the topic of Russophobia in America into the body of the article.
According to the FBI agents who searched my home, I was suspected of “taking direction” from the Russian government when I exchanged emails with a Russian diplomat about how best use the information contained in the Ambassador’s article—I wanted to make sure that by rearranging the order of some of the sections I was quoting I wasn’t misrepresenting or mischaracterizing the Ambassador’s message.
Which, of course, as a journalist, is my duty and responsibility—make sure that the source is being quoted correctly.
The case against me fails on every possible front, and the Department of Justice knows this.
As the FBI knows full well (they had, on their own admission, been monitoring my emails for at least two years), the contact between myself and the Russian Embassy (including the Ambassador) was initiated by me for the purpose of researching the topic of Russophobia.
The concept of me taking “direction” from the Russians is facially absurd.
Moreover, the methodology I use to coordinate with sources quoted or otherwise incorporated into the article is what colloquially is known as “journalism,” the functional aspect of what the Constitution, in its First Amendment, calls a “free press.”
But the FBI didn’t force their way into my home on August 7, 2024, and rummage through my earthly possessions to further a non-existent FARA violation case.
No.
The FBI violated my home—and my rights as an American citizen—because it wanted to intimidate me.
To make me think twice about making “informed judgments about Russia, its political leadership, and its people” to “see through the falsehoods and mischaracterizations” the US government and its compliant servants in the mainstream media “to warp the sensibilities and logic of Russophobia’s intended audience—the American people.”
I am not easily intimidated.
However, I am not suicidal, either.
Shortly after the FBI raid on my home, on September 4, 2024, the Department of Treasury designated 10 Russian individuals and two Russian entities as “Foreign Missions” as part of a “coordinated US government response to Moscow’s malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 presidential election.” This designation subjected any individual who made “any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any designated person” subject to sanctions or to become subject to an enforcement action.
In the spring of 2023 I began a collaboration with Solovyov Live, a podcast hosted and directed by Vladimir Solovyov, a popular Russian media personality known to be close to the Kremlin. The purpose of this cooperation wasn’t to further Russian domestic propaganda, but rather to bring Russian voices and perspective to a western audience. While picking the guests was a collaborative process, with Solovyov Live’s producer, Peter Ermolin, often taking the lead given his proximity to the people we wanted to interview, the interview topics and questions asked were mine alone, with zero input from, or editorializing by, the Solovyov Live team.
The result was a unique podcast, The Scott Ritter Show, which delivered informative interviews with prominent Russian political, academic, military, and social figures. I received no compensation for my role in this production. Rather, I viewed the act of providing these interviews to a western audience as serving the greater good by helping dispel prejudices built on ignorance that helped promote and promulgate Russophobia in the West.
While Solovyov Live was not listed by name among the sanctioned entities identified by the Department of Treasury in its September 2024 sanctions announcement, the authors specified that “any entities that are owned, directly or indirectly, individually or in the aggregate, 50 percent or more by one or more blocked persons are also blocked.”
Given the focus of attention that had been given to me by the Department of Justice and the FBI, I notified Solovyov Live that I would have to suspend production of The Scott Ritter Show until which time I could conduct the due diligence necessary to ensure that Solovyov Live’s financial arrangements did not make it, and by extension me, subject to sanctions (while I received no income from The Scott Ritter Show, it could fall under the category of “services” as regards to the new sanction designations published by the Department of Treasury). Unfortunately, Solovyov Live was unable to provide the required documentation, and The Scott Ritter Show was terminated.
In the five months that have passed since the end of The Scott Ritter Show, there has not been anything like the interviews I conducted available to a western audience. While the Department of Justice has defended its actions as necessary to protect the integrity of the 2024 presidential election, I believe the purpose was far more nefarious—to aid and abet the continued amplification of Russophobia by the Biden administration and its compliant allies in the mainstream media to keep the American public from asking questions about US-Russian relations the government did not want to answer.
One of the defining issues on the latter stages of the 2024 presidential election as far as US-Russian relations were concerned was the threat of nuclear war. Had The Scott Ritter Show been in production, the American audience would have had access to interviews with senior Russian military and political figures who could have countered the misinformation and lies being told by the Biden administration about the war in Ukraine, and the danger of nuclear war brought on by the aggressive and provocative policies being implemented by the US in Ukraine.
To this day, the American population, and indeed most of the world, remains ignorant over just how close the world came to a nuclear conflict between Russia and the US.
This is the danger of Russophobia, and this is why Russophobia must be fought.
It is, literally, a matter of national security which cannot be entrusted to the US government but rather falls upon the shoulders of the American people to execute.
And it is in this spirit and with this purpose that The Russia House with Scott Ritter is being launched. It is a continuation of the process of bringing Russian voices and perspective directly to the American people, and the citizens of the West as a whole, so that they may discern for themselves whether they want to give credence to the content provided and, if not, provide a foundation of fact-based information upon which they can construct a countervailing argument.
“Nothing in this world is harder,” the Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, wrote in his classic navel, Crime and Punishment, “than speaking the truth.”
Dostoevsky went on to elaborate on the topic of truth in The Brothers Karamazov, writing
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying - lying to others and to yourself.
The Russia House with Scott Ritter will undertake that hardest of tasks—telling the truth, understanding that the consequences of failing to do so can be catastrophic for all mankind.
The “truth” in this case is not measured by the words spoken by those being interviewed, but rather the integrity shown in presenting these words so they can be honestly and truthfully evaluated by our audience. It is up to the audience to decide what weight, if any, it wishes to place on the content of the interviews and articles published as part of The Russia House project.
It is the job of Alexandra and me to ensure that these words are presented as honestly as humanly possible.
A final note on why The Russia House with Scott Ritter is a subscription service.
As illustrated by the experience with The Scott Ritter Show, the US government is making it as difficult as possible for normal collaboration between US citizens and Russian entities, whether individual or otherwise. A product like The Russia House, if done professionally, requires a commitment of time and resources which is unsustainable as a part-time activity. It also requires that the focus of effort for this project—the front lines, so to speak, be inside Russia, where most of the voices we are trying to bring forward are located. Moreover, because of US economic sanctions, it is impossible for me as an American citizen to provide financial support to this project. As such, The Russia House with Scott Ritter is financially grounded in Russian reality. The Telegram channel is owned by Alexandra, and all financial aspects of the project are managed by her to the exclusive benefit of her and the project.
Although I am an equal partner in the project, this partnership exists in terms of content formulation and the intellectual product produced.
Financially, I have no interest in this project, nor can I until the underlying political realities that constrain economic interaction between Russia and the West are altered in a way that decriminalizes such activity.
But The Russia House is positioning itself for a future where such constraints no longer exist. As such, your subscription will not only allow Alexandra to sustain her work and commitment to the project, but enable The Russia House project to prepare for a time when travel and collaboration is not impeded by bad policy.
An investment in The Russia House with Scott Ritter not only serves the cause of overcoming Russophobia in the US and West today but also helping build the foundation for better US-Russian relations in the future.
Alexandra and I thank you for your interest in and support of this exciting new project.
Welcome to The Russia House.
Subscribe CLICK HERE
Wishing you the Best on this project. It's really needed.
In the mid-70s and through the 90's, I was on the U.S. Parachute Team training at Ft. Bragg. I traveled with the Team for many years to World Meets worldwide. At that time, no one could compete against the Russian Team or East Germans. The U.S. Team was always put in the same hotel as the Russians. We were always "warned" not to talk or mingle with them - however, I did. They were the warmest people ever! Their focus in this sport of competing in Style (gymnastics at 200 mph with only 26 seconds of airtime) was impressive. However, I was the first American woman to win over the Russians (not only the women, but also many of the men). I was a 4-time gold medal winner and became very respected by the Russian Team. I'll never forget those days and have many pictures. The men had amazing bodies, which showed their years of training, and the women were stoic and hard to compete against. It was all in good spirit -- it was only our "Team Leaders" and government who put a damper on all.
Thank you and good luck. The one thing I disagree in this is that dishonest humans behave like animals. Animals are more likely to behave honestly and at times are loving. We too are animals but more likely to be perverse than other types of animals