An important event in the world of Russian propaganda has not received adequate media coverage, and we aim to rectify this situation. The Spanish-language version of the propaganda media outlet Sputnik, which is under EU sanctions for spreading disinformation and supporting Putin’s war, has moved to a new domain, latamnews.lat.
At the same time, Russian propagandists have kept Sputnik’s logo, name, Sputnik Mundo, style, and even copied all historical content. You can find Sputnik articles from as far back as 10 years ago on latamnews, albeit under a different web address.
When was the Sputnik copy of Latam News launched?
LatamNews is a very young publication in the Russian propaganda network that broadcasts to the Spanish-speaking world. It started receiving traffic on April 8 of this year, according to web analytics programs. As of June, Latam News already has a fairly large audience—650,000 visitors per month, the lion’s share of which are from Latin America.
Readers of the new Russian propaganda outlet can easily guess that they are reading news from the Kremlin via Sputnik because it is impossible not to notice the logo, name, and style. A loyal audience, already familiar with this “brand”, likely visits the website, blindly believing in Russian propaganda and Kremlin narratives.
80% of the website’s traffic is a direct visit from users who already know the address of the website or articles.
What is the purpose of the Latam News website?
As its name suggests, it seems that the purpose of Latam News is to disseminate information in Spanish to Latin American countries. However, given Sputnik’s reputation, this runs the risk of being pro-Kremlin disinformation. Therefore, the creation of a new platform under a new address likely aims to evade the sanctions and bans imposed on Sputnik for disinformation dissemination.
Sputnik’s wanderings on the World Wide Web have been going on for more than two years: sputniknews.com moved to sputnikglobe.com; the Spanish-language version of mondo.sputniknews.com moved to sputniknews.lat; and now it has migrated to latamnews.lat.
This website, on the other hand, has nothing to do with Latin America or news in general; it is all about voices from the Russian Federation spreading disinformation and propaganda.
New Spanish-language Sputnik and Peace Summit
What prompted its creation in the spring of this year? At this time, active work was underway to organize a peace summit on Ukraine in Switzerland to find solutions and ways to end the Russian war. Ukraine and Switzerland tried to attract as many participating countries from outside Europe as possible.
Instead, Moscow tried to convince Latin American countries not to participate in the forum. To achieve this goal, pro-Kremlin media published numerous reports and ‘analytical’ articles denigrating the Peace Summit in Switzerland.
For instance, there were initial doubts about Argentine President Javier Milei’s participation. Finally, he did arrive at the summit and meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Recent research has shown that in June, the Peace Summit and the host country, Switzerland, came under fire from Russian propaganda and disinformation. The pro-Kremlin media primarily focused on discrediting the event and the peace initiative.
A voice from Russia for Latin America
As it turned out, Russian programmers did not bother, and latamnews.lat was hosted on the same server as sputniknews.com and sputniknews.lat. We checked and determined that the IP addresses of the websites are the same.
Publications that quote and disseminate Sputnik materials in Spanish
We should note that latamnews.lat already receives quotes from many online publications, which, of course, have a clear pro-Russian orientation. The EU sanctioned ria.ru, a Russian propaganda outlet, in May for its propagation.
There is also a pro-Russian multilingual media outlet, sott.net, which actually duplicates and republishes RT and Sputnik materials. Studies on networks of pro-Kremlin websites and Moscow’s hybrid influence have already highlighted Sott.net.
Globalizacion.ca is another outlet that spreads Kremlin propaganda to the Spanish-speaking world, was featured in a study of Russia’s media influence, and quoted Sputnik. It also has French and English versions on other Canadian domains.
Also, the list of Sputnik’s publications includes the Brazilian edition of politize.com.br, a Spanish online media outlet with the pretentious name geoestrategia.es that disseminates anti-Western and pro-Russian materials. Old and new Sputnik websites also receive tens of thousands of citations from the militaristic portal zona-militar.com.
In Spain and Latin America, the websites abi.bo, lapluma.net, piensachile.com, and others are also involved in the dissemination and reposting of Russian propaganda.
Among the publications that disseminate Russian Sputnik materials in Spanish are the well-known pro-Kremlin resource pravda-es.com, a member of the Pravda network of websites discovered by European fact-checkers, and the Kremlin military propaganda hardliner news-front.su.
To summarize, we note that the Spanish-speaking world and Latin America have become targets of Russian propaganda and hybrid information aggression in the Kremlin’s attempt to gain at least some support for its war against Ukraine and its claims to the occupied Ukrainian territories.
We also note that the EU and US sanctions against Russian propaganda outlets have not yet had much success, as Sputnik has skillfully moved from one web address to another, avoiding the ban, and a number of digital outlets that republish its biased and often false materials have not received any sanctions at all.
