RT Propaganda Survives Western Bans: 20 Year Analysis

The RT pro­pa­gan­da net­work has sur­vived West­ern bans by trans­form­ing into what edi­tor-in-chief Mar­gari­ta Simonyan calls an infor­ma­tion guer­ril­la using mir­ror sites and alter­na­tive plat­forms. On 5 Novem­ber 2025, UNITED24 Media report­ed that despite bans across Europe, the US, and Cana­da since 2022, RT adapt­ed its play­book by exploit­ing slow enforce­ment and region­al repo­si­tion­ing, with its Eng­lish-lan­guage web­site traf­fic near­ly dou­bling from 26.3 mil­lion to 47.8 mil­lion vis­its between 2019 and 2025. The arti­cle begins:

Despite bans across Europe, the US, and Cana­da, Rus­si­a’s state-fund­ed net­work RT is far from gone. The Krem­lin’s favorite media weapon has mor­phed into a hybrid pro­pa­gan­da machine—streaming through small­er plat­forms, part­ner out­lets, and social media ecosys­tems that still reach mil­lions. Data reviewed by UNITED24 Media shows how RT adapt­ed its play­book after 2022, turn­ing sanc­tions into an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rebrand and retar­get new audi­ences. To mark 20 years since its cre­ation, Rus­si­a’s for­eign pro­pa­gan­da chan­nel RT (for­mer­ly Rus­sia Today) pro­duced and post­ed a deep­fake video that uses AI tools to gen­er­ate sev­er­al of the most pop­u­lar Amer­i­can anchors, among them Ander­son Coop­er (CNN), Rachel Mad­dow (MSNBC) and Sean Han­ni­ty (Fox News). Framed as a long con­fes­sion stitched from frag­ments “spo­ken” by each of them, the Russ­ian chan­nel accus­es these jour­nal­ists of lack­ing objec­tiv­i­ty and serv­ing only the inter­ests of the US government.

Read more: https://united24media.com/anti-fake/20-years-of-rt-how-russias-propaganda-hydra-survived-the-ban-13121

Key Points

• RT’s Eng­lish-lan­guage web­site traf­fic near­ly dou­bled from 26.3 mil­lion to 47.8 mil­lion vis­its between 2019 and 2025, dri­ven large­ly by Russ­ian-based IP address­es, while French site traf­fic dropped more than twen­ty­fold after sanctions.
• RT edi­tor-in-chief Mar­gari­ta Simonyan con­firmed the chan­nel’s heavy use of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to pro­duce con­tent, stat­ing that a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of TV pre­sen­ters do not exist and are com­plete­ly arti­fi­cial with gen­er­at­ed voic­es and faces.
• The net­work bypass­es EU sanc­tions through mir­ror sites like freed**.online in Ger­many (690,000 month­ly vis­its) and swen**.site in Swe­den (309,000 month­ly vis­its), alter­na­tive video plat­forms, and front com­pa­nies repub­lish­ing RT content.
• For­mer RT per­son­nel includ­ing Xenia Fedoro­va in France, Afshin Rat­tan­si in the UK, and Dinara Tok­to­suno­va in Dubai con­tin­ue oper­a­tions through new plat­forms, with Fedoro­va appear­ing week­ly on French chan­nel CNews despite RT France’s 2023 liquidation.

RT Russian Propaganda Network Survives Western Bans

Rus­sia Today, now known as RT, func­tions as the Krem­lin’s flag­ship for export­ing strate­gic nar­ra­tives well beyond Rus­si­a’s bor­ders, oper­at­ing in mul­ti­ple lan­guages includ­ing Eng­lish, French, Ger­man, Ara­bic, and Span­ish. The Span­ish-lan­guage off­shoot Actu­al­i­dad RT has amassed more than 18 mil­lion Face­book fol­low­ers and almost six mil­lion YouTube sub­scribers, far out­strip­ping the Eng­lish-lan­guage ver­sion banned in most West­ern coun­tries. While RT mim­ics inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism by recruit­ing for­eign cor­re­spon­dents and empha­siz­ing sleek pro­duc­tion, its cen­tral mis­sion remains ampli­fy­ing pro-Krem­lin, anti-West­ern themes.

Fol­low­ing Rus­si­a’s full-scale inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022, the Euro­pean Union banned RT in a mat­ter of days, describ­ing it as essen­tial and instru­men­tal in pro­mot­ing the war. The Unit­ed States dropped RT from stream­ing plat­forms, blocked its YouTube chan­nel, and sanc­tioned the net­work, with Meta block­ing its Face­book and Insta­gram accounts. Despite West­ern coun­ter­mea­sures, RT has expand­ed across Africa, Latin Amer­i­ca, the Mid­dle East, and South­east Asia, with alleged takeovers of local tele­vi­sion chan­nels in Chile and train­ing pro­grams teach­ing African jour­nal­ists that Ukrain­ian war crimes were “fake news.” The expan­sion exploits deep-seat­ed anti-West­ern sen­ti­ment in the Glob­al South, where 52 coun­tries abstained or opposed UN res­o­lu­tions con­demn­ing Rus­si­a’s Ukraine inva­sion, sug­gest­ing some suc­cess for Russ­ian narratives.

RT estab­lished region­al out­posts such as its Bel­grade bureau to recast Krem­lin talk­ing points for Balkan audi­ences, dis­trib­ut­ing nar­ra­tives tai­lored to local griev­ances across con­ti­nents. The net­work claims avail­abil­i­ty to 900 mil­lion TV view­ers in 100+ coun­tries with 23 bil­lion online views in 2024, though experts ques­tion these fig­ures as “extreme­ly unlike­ly” and eas­i­ly manip­u­lat­ed met­rics. Beyond tele­vi­sion, for­eign jour­nal­ists receive train­ing at RT and Sput­nik, learn­ing to debunk anti-Russ­ian myths as part of Rus­si­a’s broad­er soft pow­er strategy.

The net­work’s adapt­abil­i­ty is evi­dent in its efforts to evade sanc­tions and plat­form bans. RT is covert­ly financ­ing sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent video blog­gers who pro­mote pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives to West­ern audi­ences, with one YouTube chan­nel receiv­ing over $180,000 while its host claimed inde­pen­dence. Beyond overt broad­cast­ing, Russ­ian infor­ma­tion war­fare has expand­ed to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly con­t­a­m­i­nate AI lan­guage mod­els and Wikipedia entries with pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives through the Prav­da net­work, a col­lec­tion of fraud­u­lent news por­tals tar­get­ing more than eighty coun­tries. RT con­tin­ues to project Russ­ian geopo­lit­i­cal pri­or­i­ties, blend­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion, con­spir­acism, and sophis­ti­cat­ed media tac­tics to erode trust in demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions and ampli­fy divi­sions with­in tar­get societies.

Exter­nal References:

• RT | Rus­sia Today, Pro­pa­gan­da, Vladimir Putin, Dis­in­for­ma­tion (Bri­tan­ni­ca)
• Two Years Into EU Ban, Rus­si­a’s RT And Sput­nik Are Still Acces­si­ble (Radio Free Europe)
• Despite West­ern bans, Putin’s pro­pa­gan­da flour­ish­es in Span­ish (Reuters Institute)

Dis­claimer: The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) uti­lizes AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sum­maries for news items, intro­duc­tions, key points, and, often, the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, all images are gen­er­at­ed using AI and are intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.