Russian Propaganda Expands in Latin America WIth RT Workshops

Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da oper­a­tions are expand­ing in Latin Amer­i­ca through RT work­shops and covert cam­paigns. On 10 Decem­ber 2025, The Ful­crum report­ed that the RT Com­paRTe ini­tia­tive held train­ing events in at least eight Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, train­ing over 1,000 jour­nal­ists, while the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice seized domains linked to the Dop­pel­gänger oper­a­tion. The arti­cle begins:

Amid polit­i­cal unrest ahead of Mex­i­co’s 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion —between late 2023 and ear­ly 2024—, Russ­ian state media out­let Rus­sia Today (RT) launched a street-lev­el pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign in Mex­i­co City. Posters appeared in Metro and Metrobús sta­tions, encour­ag­ing com­muters to scan a QR code to watch the chan­nel’s news­casts. The pro­mo­tion drew scruti­ny in Mex­i­can media, which not­ed that the Euro­pean Union and com­pa­nies such as Google had blocked RT for spread­ing pro-Putin nar­ra­tives and dis­in­for­ma­tion about Rus­si­a’s inva­sion of Ukraine, which began Feb. 22, 2022.

Read more: https://thefulcrum.us/governance-legislation/rt-lavadora-propaganda-workshops-latin-america-us

Key Points

• RT Com­paRTe ini­tia­tive held train­ing events over the past three years in at least eight Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, includ­ing Mex­i­co, Argenti­na, Colom­bia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Guatemala, and Pana­ma, with more than 1,000 jour­nal­ists and media work­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in work­shops and exchange pro­grams cov­er­ing source man­age­ment, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, and fact-checking.
• The US Depart­ment of Jus­tice seized 32 inter­net domains linked to the Dop­pel­gänger oper­a­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2024, with Russ­ian com­pa­nies Social Design Agency and Struc­tura Nation­al Tech­nol­o­gy alleged­ly cloning gov­ern­ment and media web­sites to spread anti-Ukraine nar­ra­tives and influ­ence the 2024 US pres­i­den­tial election.
• Seized doc­u­ment indi­cates SDA includ­ed Mex­i­co in dis­in­for­ma­tion plans under Oper­a­tion Méx­i­co No Per­dona, intend­ing to encour­age anti-Amer­i­can sen­ti­ment and exac­er­bate con­fronta­tion between the Unit­ed States and Mex­i­co, with cam­paign goal to influ­ence the US Pres­i­den­tial Elec­tion despite tar­get­ing Mexico.
• RT Span­ish-lan­guage con­tent cur­rent­ly airs in 18 Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, with at least 81 cable providers car­ry­ing RT in Mex­i­co, while Tel­susa broad­casts over open dig­i­tal tele­vi­sion, claim­ing cov­er­age in 15 of 32 Mex­i­can states and reach­ing a poten­tial audi­ence of 11 mil­lion households.

Russia’s Influence Operations in Latin America: How the Kremlin Dominates Spanish-Language Media

Rus­sia has built a for­mi­da­ble influ­ence oper­a­tion infra­struc­ture across Latin Amer­i­ca, with its Span­ish-lan­guage media out­lets out­per­form­ing US coun­ter­parts by a three-to-one ratio. Actu­al­i­dad RT, the Span­ish-lan­guage off­shoot of Rus­sia Today, has amassed over 18 mil­lion Face­book fol­low­ers and near­ly 6 mil­lion YouTube sub­scribers, far exceed­ing the Eng­lish-lan­guage ver­sion, which is banned across West­ern coun­tries. The net­work main­tains 200 Span­ish-speak­ing employ­ees with offices in Venezuela, Cuba, and Argenti­na, and ranked sec­ond among Span­ish-lan­guage news chan­nels on YouTube.

These oper­a­tions have proved remark­ably suc­cess­ful in shap­ing region­al sen­ti­ment. A George­town Uni­ver­si­ty study doc­u­ment­ed a notable increase in pro-Russ­ian sen­ti­ment through Span­ish-lan­guage social media since Rus­si­a’s 2022 inva­sion of Ukraine, with anony­mous accounts dis­play­ing coor­di­nat­ed pro-Krem­lin mes­sag­ing. The viral #IStand­With­Putin cam­paign demon­strat­ed that influ­ence oper­a­tions suc­ceed where antipa­thy for the West runs deep, with researchers warn­ing that West­ern ana­lysts may be miss­ing bat­tles fought in non-Eng­lish infor­ma­tion spaces. A CSIS analy­sis found RT en Español ranked sec­ond in Colom­bia and ninth in Chile for X influ­ence, while the US Voice of Amer­i­ca failed to reach the top 100.

The Krem­lin’s strat­e­gy extends beyond overt media oper­a­tions. A U.S. State Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tion exposed covert cam­paigns span­ning at least 13 Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, where Russ­ian PR firms recruit local jour­nal­ists and influ­encers to laun­der pro-Krem­lin con­tent through indige­nous media. Even after RT’s top Latin Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­dist Inna Afinogen­o­va resigned over Ukraine, for­mer RT jour­nal­ists con­tin­ue ampli­fy­ing Moscow’s nar­ra­tives through pro­gres­sive Span­ish-lan­guage out­lets. The Atlantic Coun­cil’s Dig­i­tal Foren­sic Research Lab doc­u­ment­ed how Russ­ian ambas­sadors tai­lor mes­sag­ing to local con­texts, empha­siz­ing anti-colo­nial themes that res­onate with region­al audi­ences sus­pi­cious of West­ern influence.

Exter­nal References:

• Ukraine’s Nar­ra­tive War: Com­bat­ing Russ­ian Dis­in­for­ma­tion in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean
• In Latin Amer­i­ca, Rus­si­a’s Ambas­sadors and State Media Tai­lor Anti-Ukraine Con­tent to the Local Context
• The Krem­lin’s Efforts to Covert­ly Spread Dis­in­for­ma­tion in Latin America

 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.