Russia State Media Expansion: Kremlin Fills Western Void

Over the last three years, the Russ­ian state-backed news chan­nel RT and news agency and radio Sput­nik, have expand­ed their inter­na­tion­al pres­ence; between them, they now broad­cast across Africa, the Balka­ns, the Mid­dle East, South­east Asia and Latin Amer­i­ca. This all coin­cides with bans in West­ern countries.

Key Points

• RT has opened bureaus in Alge­ria, launched Ser­bian TV ser­vice, and announced an India office while Sput­nik launched an Ethiopia news­room as West­ern media out­lets cut bud­gets and with­draw from regions.

• Russ­ian train­ing cours­es for African jour­nal­ists dis­missed Syr­i­an chem­i­cal weapons attacks and Ukrain­ian civil­ian mas­sacres in Bucha as “fake news,” with par­tic­i­pants lat­er adopt­ing these false narratives.

• RT 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.

• The expan­sion exploits anti-West­ern sen­ti­ment in the Glob­al South, with 52 coun­tries abstain­ing or oppos­ing UN res­o­lu­tions con­demn­ing Russia’s Ukraine inva­sion, sug­gest­ing some suc­cess for Russ­ian narratives.

RT & Russian Influence Operations: Beyond Broadcast

RT, a prin­ci­pal chan­nel of Russ­ian geopo­lit­i­cal pro­jec­tion, serves as the Kremlin’s flag­ship for export­ing its strate­gic nar­ra­tives well beyond Russia’s bor­ders, estab­lish­ing region­al out­posts such as its Bel­grade bureau to recast Krem­lin talk­ing points for Balkan audi­ences. While RT often mim­ics the trap­pings of inde­pen­dent journalism—recruiting for­eign cor­re­spon­dents and empha­siz­ing sleek production—its cen­tral mis­sion remains the ampli­fi­ca­tion of pro-Krem­lin, anti-West­ern themes, cast­ing doubt on inter­na­tion­al insti­tu­tions and dis­trib­ut­ing nar­ra­tives tai­lored to local griev­ances across Africa, Asia, and Latin Amer­i­ca.

Inter­nal dis­sent has occa­sion­al­ly sur­faced, as when a senior pro­pa­gan­dist resigned over eth­i­cal objec­tions to war cov­er­age, under­scor­ing the ten­sion between RT’s pro­fes­sion­al veneer and its role as a state pro­pa­gan­da organ. The network’s adapt­abil­i­ty is evi­dent in its efforts to evade sanc­tions and plat­form bans, rebrand­ing or part­ner­ing with third par­ties to main­tain access to glob­al audi­ences. RT’s influ­ence oper­a­tions extend beyond overt broad­cast­ing: it has been impli­cat­ed in covert schemes to bankroll for­eign influ­encers, lay­er­ing clan­des­tine activ­i­ties atop its pub­lic-fac­ing media pres­ence, rais­ing alarms among West­ern gov­ern­ments over its inte­gra­tion into broad­er Russ­ian hybrid war­fare strate­gies.

Despite West­ern coun­ter­mea­sures, 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  

1. Why Rus­si­a’s broad­cast­er RT turned to covert­ly fund­ing Amer­i­can pro-Trump influ­encers (NPR, Sept 2024)
2. From Rus­sia to Ser­bia: How RT spreads the Kremlin’s pro­pa­gan­da in the Balka­ns despite EU sanc­tions (RSF, Sept 2024)
3. RT, Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da chan­nel with an elas­tic line (IHEDN, June 2024)