Securing Democracy Dispatch

RT’s and Sputnik’s English-language accounts largely supported US President Donald Trump’s immigration and border policies, casting migrants as “dangerous” and characterizing the crackdown as a necessity. Their Spanish-language counterparts, however, present a different narrative, expressing criticism and calling out the policies’ repercussions on human rights, in yet another display of how the Kremlin messengers play audiences on both sides of contentious issues to advance their geopolitical agenda, Research Analyst Krystyna Sikora writes.

As tensions in the Baltic Sea increased this spring over Russian vessels’ destabilizing behavior, Russian state messaging kicked into gear to frame NATO’s responses as escalatory and spread conspiracies about the Baltic states and other countries, Open-Source Intelligence Analyst Larissa Doroshenko and GMF analysts write.

“The legitimacy and fate of the entire Putin regime is based on not just concluding this war on Russian terms but continuing to fight it for the foreseeable future,” Managing Director David Salvo tells CNN about US efforts to negotiate an end to war in Ukraine.

Russian diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week:

• Ceasefire Negotiations: Russian officials and state media celebrated “more productive than expected” negotiations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff yesterday in Moscow. Russia’s special economic envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, welcomed US President Donald Trump’s assessment of the talks, assuring that “positive forces will prevail”. RT cited White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s claim that “the Russians expressed their desire to meet” with Trump. However, TASS warned that more negotiations would be necessary before this meeting. RIA Novosti emphasized US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s conclusion that the United States considers territorial disputes as a key to the ceasefire agreement and expects concessions from Moscow and Kyiv alike. TASS also reported that during the White House press conference, Trump shifted attention to the ongoing talks and did not mention possible sanctions or other consequences for Russia if the negotiations fail.
• US Tariffs on Brazil and India: Russian propaganda outlets sided with Brazil and India in their resistance to US tariffs. RT amplified Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who accused the United States of economic blackmail, vowed to defend national sovereignty, and promised to remember that the United States “helped to stage a coup”. TASS assured that Brazil and India would continue buying oil from Russia, while RT Arabic added that India is currently negotiating purchase of more Russian crude in September. TASS predicted a spike in world oil prices if China and India were to halt supplies from Russia, a scenario that, according to TASS, would harm US interests. TASS also shared hypocrisy accusations from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, which claimed the United States would continue buying raw materials and fertilizers from Russia. Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova echoed these allegations and called tariffs “politicized levers of economic pressure against those who refuse to follow in its [US] wake”.

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) diplomats and state media focused on two main narratives this week:

• US Tariffs: Last week, the PRC continued to denounce US tariffs. The PRC MFA, amplified by the PRC Embassy in the United States, shrugged off threats of additional tariffs on Russian oil imports. Xinhua quoted a British expert lauding China’s economic resilience while CGTN asserted that tariffs would hurt the US economy most. CGTN Europe interviewed an American economist who lamented that “targeting allies with tariffs damages US credibility”. Xinhua warned that Africans could be “closing their hearts” to the United States over its inimical policies. The PRC Embassy in India’s spokesperson broadly criticized US tariffs while state media relayed New Delhi’s anger at new US measures targeting Indian goods. Nationalist tabloid Global Times highlighted the “strategic cards” granted by India’s and Brazil’s BRICS status and advertised the PRC opening its market to Brazilian coffee imports.
• Patriotic Blockbuster: PRC diplomats and state media alike relayed the impressive box-office numbers of a new film about the massacre perpetrated by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanjing during World War II. Diplomats in the Dominican Republic, Ghana, the Philippines, and the United States all relayed news about the movie’s release. The Consulate General in Christchurch, New Zealand, “strongly encourage[d]” people to go see it in theaters, and the Consulate in San Francisco, United States amplified an American citizen’s call for “people in the West to see this movie”. The MFA highlighted the city’s reconstruction and the PRC Embassy in India commented that the film contrasted with “the peace and vitality of modern China”. Meanwhile, state media commentators deplored that “some militarists” in Japan denied the massacre and hoped that “Japan [would] keep its commitment” to learn from history and avoid a repeat of “Chinese people[’s] (…) own Holocaust”.

Iranian diplomats and state media focused on one main narrative this week:

• Gaza Crisis: Iranian state messengers continued to condemn Israel and the United States for their complicity in the hunger crisis in Gaza. Iranian state media alleged the hunger crisis in Gaza was a “politically calculated” move by Israel to dehumanize Palestinians, accusing Israel of blocking more than 22,000 aid trucks and providing “expired and moldy food”. Iran’s Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina posted a graphic of a fork with missiles as prongs. Iran’s Spanish-language media outlet HispanTV accused the Gaza Humanitarian Aid, a US Agency for International Development project launched by the Trump administration in February, of being responsible for the death of 1,400 Gazans. In the same vein, other outlets amplified reports saying Trump “lied” about how much aid the United States gave Gaza and claimed a network of US organizations masking as “charities” funded Israeli war crimes. The Tehran Times called US envoy Witkoff’s visit to Gaza a “photo-op” meant to whitewash the United States’ and Israel’s “bloodbaths.”

PRC-linked companies use AI to sharpen foreign information operations: At least one Chinese company has been using artificial intelligence (AI) to help the PRC track swings in foreign public opinion to help Beijing strengthen its foreign information operations, internal documents show. One such firm has previously conducted pro-PRC influence campaigns in Hong Kong and Taiwan and collected data about several members of the US Congress and other influential Americans. Acting Manager for Europe and Fellow Etienne Soula says, “A steady stream of evidence suggests that authoritarian regimes are experimenting with AI to supercharge their information operations. Russia has used large-language models (LLMs) to boost the output of the networks it uses to relay its propaganda, as well as sought to use that output to ‘poison’ the data LLMs use to train. It’s no surprise then that the PRC would follow suit and use AI tools to buttress the weaker areas of its information operations, in particular its relatively low level of understanding of, and adaptation to, local socio-political contexts in the countries it targets.”

Russia tightens control of internet domestically, pushes state-approved apps: Russia’s government has authorized the preinstallation of a state-approved messaging service called MAX on all new smartphones sold starting next month and cracked down on workarounds that allowed Russian citizens to access banned Western social-media platforms like YouTube. Managing Director David Salvo writes, “Russia’s propaganda app is obviously a troubling development for Russian citizens’ ability to access reliable information. But it’s also concerning that authoritarian actors might adopt this sort of practice in other countries. We’ve already witnessed the export of Russia’s authoritarian playbook to countries in the Euro-Atlantic community, including the co-option of media outlets. At a time when citizens—particularly young people—increasingly get their news online, restricting access to ‘hostile’ sources of information and installing friendly news sources on smartphones is an obvious next step for autocrats to control the flow of information.”

In Case You Missed It

• A woman was charged under Australia’s foreign-interference laws for allegedly collecting information about the Canberra branch of a Buddhist organization on PRC intelligence’s behalf.
• A new US State Department cable reportedly orders US diplomats in Europe to regularly engage with governments to change or repeal the EU’s Digital Services Act, according to Reuters.
• A pro-Russian influence campaign spoofed a British entertainment-news magazine and used the identity of a legitimate journalist to publish stories that falsely accused Moldovan President Maia Sandu of paying for illegally obtained sperm samples from several Western celebrities.
• Moldovan intelligence warned that Russia intends to target the country’s near quarter-of-a-million diaspora voters and convince them not to vote in September’s parliamentary election, including by spoofing legitimate outlets.

The views expressed in GMF publications and commentary are the views of the author alone.