Despite Russia being the country that invaded neighboring Ukraine, the Kremlin’s version relentlessly warns social media users in Latin America that the United States is the big problem.
“Never forget who the real threat to the world is,” reads one headline. The article, originally published on Twitter by RT en Español in late February, is aimed at an audience on the other side of the world from the fighting in Kyiv and Mariúpol.
As the war rages on, Russia is spreading falsehoods among Spanish-speaking social media users in nations that already have long histories of distrust of the United States. The aim is to win support for the Kremlin war in these countries and stir up resistance to Washington’s reaction.
Although many of the claims have been debunked, they are spreading widely across Latin America and are helping to make Kremlin-controlled outlets some of the leading Spanish-language sources of information on the war. The Russian portal RT en Español is now the third most shared page on Twitter for information in that language about the Russian invasion.
“RT’s success should worry anyone who cares about the success of democracy,” said Samuel Woolley, a professor at the University of Texas who studies disinformation. “RT is geared towards authoritarian control and, depending on the context, towards nationalism and xenophobia. The risk we are taking is that Russia is gaining more and more market share.”
US-based tech companies have sought to limit the Russian media’s ability to spread post-invasion propaganda by banning apps linked to them, banning their content and flagging the state press. The European Union has banned RT and the state news agency Sputnik.
However, content thrives on Spanish websites, forums and social media pages. Although Russia also creates propaganda in other languages such as English, Arabic, French and German, it has been particularly successful with Spanish-speaking internet users, according to recent research by Esteban Ponce de León, a Bogotá, Colombia-based analyst who works for the Digital Forensic Research Laboratory of the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank funded by the US government, among others.
Discredited Russian claims about Ukraine and the United States include claims that the invasion was necessary to confront neo-Nazis or that Washington was secretly supporting biological weapons research on Ukrainian soil. The White House has long funded public biology laboratories in Ukraine that study pathogens in hopes of containing dangerous disease outbreaks.
This type of misinformation can easily spread from Latin America to other countries — including the United States — with large Spanish-speaking communities. Sometimes it is transmitted through relatives and travel between continents. It’s another potential goal for Russia and a reminder of the level of sophistication in their efforts.
“There are several ways that RT is actively engaging communities in Latin America and the United States,” said Jacobo Licona, a researcher at Democratic consulting firm Equis Labs. “It’s one of the reasons RT has been so effective, it’s built this network.” or community before”.
As one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, Spanish has obvious utility for any government or organization striving to shape global public opinion. But Russian interest goes further and reflects the strategic and historical importance of Central and South America during the Cold War, Ponce de León stressed.
For decades, the Soviet Union attempted to exploit historical tensions between the United States and Latin America, by alienating communist factions and key allies such as the United States Cuba. Moscow has attempted to portray Washington as a colonizing empire, while the Kremlin worked to strengthen its own ties to the region.
RT launched its Spanish version in 2009, four years after the English one. It quickly gained ground and is now much more popular than the English service. RT en Español has more than 16 million followers on its Facebook page, almost three times as many as the English profile.
High-profile Latin American personalities have helped him on a few occasions. Rafael Correa, the former president of Ecuador, began hosting a weekly political talk show for RT in 2018, less than a year after leaving office. Since then he has been convicted of corruption and had to flee to Europe. The Ecuadorian authorities also accuse him of trying to destabilize the government of his successor.
In March, the RT en Español Facebook page saw an increase in interactions with around 75,000 likes, reactions and comments on its posts every day, according to analysis by the Equis Institute. This phenomenon continued even after Meta announced it would ban Russian state media profiles on its platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram.
On Twitter, RT and Sputnik have the help of Russian diplomats and a network of accounts that researchers say artificially boost the popularity of their posts. This has helped her become the third most shared information page in Spanish about the war in Ukraine on Twitter, overtaking local and international media such as the BBC and CNN.
Ponce de León tracked thousands of accounts that published or replicated RT and Sputnik content on Twitter and found that 171 of them were responsible for 11% of the overall reactions to their content. During an eight-day period in March, these accounts created more than 200,000 posts, or an average of 155 tweets per day per account, far more than the average user.
The suspicious accounts helped expose the content to real users, Ponce de León said, in a bid to grow RT’s already impressive audience in Latin America.
“Russia is trying to maintain its popularity in Latin America,” he said. “RT and Sputnik already have a large audience in the region. Do we need to worry? The answer would be yes.”