kremlin using local media outlets to gain acceptance for its illegal behavior
The kremlin continues to adapt its ways for global media expansion. The distinct campaign, aimed at forming partnerships with local media outlets around the world, was launched around 2015 and it moved beyond simply expanding the availability of russian media networks, write Nataliya Bugayova and George Barros for iswresearch.org.
In the last five years, russia has signed at least 50 media cooperation agreements. Most of them focus on content sharing between russian-controlled media outlets and local outlets in various countries. But some agreements include russian media training for journalists from other countries and even intergovernmental cooperation exchanges between russia’s Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media and its foreign counterparts.
The campaign to cultivate partnerships was launched together with the revision of russia’s Information Security Doctrine. The kremlin has likely assessed that it needs to create a global information space with lasting ties to local structures and to build media coalitions as essential requirements for securing russia’s grand strategic objectives of re-establishing russia as great power and ending “U.S. hegemony.”