Russia Today Training Journalists for Propaganda Campaign

Rus­sia Today train­ing jour­nal­ists has emerged as a key tac­tic in Moscow’s evolv­ing pro­pa­gan­da machine to expand influ­ence across Africa and oth­er regions. On 23 Octo­ber 2025, Nie­man Lab report­ed that par­tic­i­pants at the Disinfo2025 con­fer­ence in Ljubl­jana revealed Rus­sia opened the War Cor­re­spon­dents’ School in occu­pied Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ries in 2022 to train future pro­pa­gan­dists, while RT’s free inter­na­tion­al train­ing pro­gram offers cur­ricu­lum imbued with Krem­lin nar­ra­tives. The arti­cle begins:

The counter-dis­in­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­ty gath­ered in Ljubl­jana, Slove­nia, for an annu­al con­fer­ence this month, toward the end of a year that has seen Meta scrap its fact-check­ing pro­gram, a vac­cine skep­tic sworn in as U.S. health sec­re­tary, and read­ers increas­ing­ly turn to AI chat­bots to find infor­ma­tion. Over two days at Disinfo2025, a con­fer­ence orga­nized by the Brus­sels non­prof­it EU Dis­in­fo Lab, pan­elists includ­ing jour­nal­ists, attor­neys, ana­lysts, and fact-check­ers pre­sent­ed the lat­est devel­op­ments in the rapid­ly evolv­ing infor­ma­tion land­scape. These ranged from for­eign infor­ma­tion manip­u­la­tion and inter­fer­ence (FIMI) and how to build a bet­ter eco­nom­ic mod­el for jour­nal­ism to the risk of online influ­encers upend­ing peace talks. Unsur­pris­ing­ly giv­en the Euro­pean focus and cur­rent geopo­lit­i­cal land­scape, Russ­ian malign influ­ence oper­a­tions took cen­ter stage at the event, while there were also fre­quent dis­cus­sions among par­tic­i­pants about how Europe can forge a path with­out U.S. support.

Read more: https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/10/russia-today-is-training-the-next-generation-of-journalists-and-other-notes-from-disinfo2025/

Key Points

• Rus­sia opened the War Cor­re­spon­dents’ School in occu­pied Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ries in 2022 to pro­vide train­ing for future pro­pa­gan­dists, while RT launched a free inter­na­tion­al train­ing pro­gram in Octo­ber 2024 offer­ing intro­duc­to­ry jour­nal­ism cur­ricu­lum imbued with Krem­lin narratives.
• Jakub Śliż, pres­i­dent of fact-check­ing orga­ni­za­tion Prav­da, report­ed that Moscow is back­ing media train­ing to expand soft pow­er in Africa by send­ing ambi­tious stu­dents to Moscow, with most CVs he receives list­ing the Rus­sia Today train­ing program.
• Rus­sia is mir­ror­ing inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism insti­tu­tions through ini­tia­tives like the Glob­al Fact Check­ing Net­work to pro­mote Krem­lin nar­ra­tives about Ukraine, cre­at­ing orga­ni­za­tions that look nor­mal but are fund­ed and direct­ed by enti­ties with clear Krem­lin affiliations.
• The Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s deci­sion to dis­man­tle the U.S. Agency for Glob­al Media, which includes Radio Free Europe and Voice of Amer­i­ca, was wel­comed pub­licly by the Krem­lin as few­er inde­pen­dent sources means more space for Russ­ian propaganda.

Russia Today (RT): Evolution of Russian Influence Operations from State Media to Intelligence Tool

RT, for­mer­ly known as Rus­sia Today, has evolved from a state-fund­ed broad­cast­er into a prin­ci­pal chan­nel of Russ­ian geopo­lit­i­cal pro­jec­tion serv­ing as the Krem­lin’s flag­ship for export­ing strate­gic nar­ra­tives across con­ti­nents. Launched in 2005, the net­work oper­ates in mul­ti­ple lan­guages and has achieved remark­able suc­cess in regions like Latin Amer­i­ca, where its Span­ish-lan­guage off­shoot Actu­al­i­dad RT amassed more than 18 mil­lion Face­book fol­low­ers and almost six mil­lion YouTube sub­scribers, far sur­pass­ing its Eng­lish-lan­guage counterpart.

Beyond tra­di­tion­al broad­cast­ing, RT has adapt­ed through covert oper­a­tions by secret­ly fund­ing sup­pos­ed­ly inde­pen­dent video blog­gers who pro­mote pro-Krem­lin nar­ra­tives to West­ern audi­ences while claim­ing inde­pen­dence. One chan­nel received over $180,000 from RT while main­tain­ing its host was unbi­ased. The net­work demon­strates sophis­ti­cat­ed eva­sion tac­tics, rebrand­ing con­tent under names like “Dig Deep Doc­u­men­tary” to cir­cum­vent plat­form bans, and expand­ing to plat­forms like Telegram where dif­fer­ent lan­guage ver­sions cre­at­ed over 30 channels.

RT’s expan­sion has accel­er­at­ed as West­ern media with­draw from key regions. The net­work has opened bureaus in Alge­ria and Ser­bia while launch­ing ser­vices in India, with alleged takeovers of local tele­vi­sion chan­nels and train­ing pro­grams teach­ing African jour­nal­ists that Ukrain­ian war crimes were “fake news.” The oper­a­tion exploits anti-West­ern sen­ti­ment, con­tribut­ing to 52 coun­tries abstain­ing or oppos­ing UN res­o­lu­tions con­demn­ing Rus­si­a’s Ukraine invasion.

U.S. offi­cials revealed in Sep­tem­ber 2024 that RT has moved beyond pro­pa­gan­da, with Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken stat­ing the out­let oper­ates with cyber­in­tel­li­gence capa­bil­i­ties and func­tions as an arm of Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices. The State Depart­ment dis­closed that RT embed­ded an intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing unit with­in its oper­a­tions and admin­is­ters crowd­fund­ing plat­forms pro­vid­ing mil­i­tary equip­ment to Russ­ian forces, includ­ing sniper rifles and drones. The net­work’s inte­gra­tion with Russ­ian intel­li­gence rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant evo­lu­tion in hybrid war­fare tac­tics, blend­ing sophis­ti­cat­ed media pro­duc­tion with clan­des­tine oper­a­tions to erode trust in demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions globally.

Exter­nal References:
— Why Rus­si­a’s broad­cast­er RT turned to covert­ly fund­ing Amer­i­can pro-Trump influ­encers (NPR)
— Rus­si­a’s RT Net­work Work­ing Direct­ly With Krem­lin To Spread Dis­in­for­ma­tion, U.S. Says (Radio Free Europe)
— Biden admin­is­tra­tion expect­ed to unveil new evi­dence of RT’s key role in Russ­ian intel­li­gence oper­a­tions glob­al­ly (CNN)

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.