When in early January U.S. intelligence agencies issued their report on Russia’s alleged meddling in the U.S. election, Margarita Simonyan, the head of the Kremlin-funded international TV channel RT, was amused. “Laughter of the year,” she tweeted in Russian about the declassified report much of which — seven out of 25 pages to be precise — was dedicated to her 24-hour news network.

For Simonyan, who has run the channel since it was founded in 2005, dealing with controversy is part of the job description: RT’s journalists have quit on air in protest of being forced to toe Moscow’s line, the network has been caught redacting its footage to conform to the Kremlin’s narrative of its actions abroad and the western press enjoys pointing out that Simonyan even has a direct line to the Kremlin on her desk.

So why does RT appeal to western audiences?

Despite its reputation, RT is a remarkable success story. Set up to provide a “Russian perspective” on world events, today the network is watched by 35 million people daily in 38 countries with over two million people subscribed on YouTube, many of whom are tuning in from Western Europe and the United States.