Russia’s Patterns and Propaganda Techniques

Russia uses propaganda to shape the perceptions of its adversaries’ populations with the aim of eroding trust in their electoral systems, leadership structures, and democratic institutions. By exploiting cultural, economic, and political tensions in democracies and transitioning countries, Russia creates chaos, doubt, and unrest. One of Russia’s tactics to create division and discontent builds on a long tradition of exploiting antisemitism. Russia’s leaders, propagandists, and state media spread anti-Jewish conspiracy theories to shift blame and distort world events, especially in Western democracies.

According to a January 2024 U.S. State Dept. report, “For over a century, Tsarist, Soviet, and now Russian Federation authorities have used antisemitism to discredit, divide, and weaken their perceived adversaries at home and abroad.” A Digital News Association analysis found that today’s Russian Federation, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, continues to strongly exploit centuries-old myths about antisemitism.

Many of these myths center around the Rothschild family. A successful Ashkenazi Jewish family of nobility, the Rothschilds can be traced back to Germany in 1567. The family earned their wealth in locations such as Frankfurt, London, Naples, Paris, and Vienna, ascending to noble status in the Holy Roman Empire and the United Kingdom. By the 1800s, the Rothschilds had the largest private share of wealth in the world.

Many modern-day conspiracy theories targeting Jews evolved from antisemitic tropes that suggested the Rothschild family encouraged wars because they profited when countries borrowed money during wartime. Other theories falsely accused the Jews of encouraging wars just because other banking families sometimes benefited from the war reconstruction efforts, public debt refinancing, and even the expansion of capitalism and industrialism. Some theories alleged the Jews worked within secret societies, such as the mythical Illuminati, to rule the world.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, “the belief that the Rothschilds manipulate currency and influence global events for personal enrichment and world domination is a staple of antisemitic conspiracy theorists.”

One of the most harmful works of antisemitic propaganda was published in Tsarist Russia in 1903 in the form of a fabricated text called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The fabricated text purports to memorialize a secret meeting between Jewish leaders in which they wrote a blueprint to rule the world. The London Times proved the text was fraudulent in 1921, but only after it inspired decades of violent attacks (“pogroms”) against Jewish communities in the Russian Empire. Even after the Times’ debunked the fraudulent text, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia promoted its content to generate animosity against Jewish targets. Today, Putin’s present-day United Russia Party and its state press apparatus promote these discredited antisemitic conspiracy theories as part of its overall efforts to expand its presence in Latin America.

In 2016, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova suggested Jews orchestrated the presidential victory of Donald J. Trump. “If you want to know what will happen in America, who do you have to talk to? You have to talk to the Jews, naturally. But of course,” Zakharova said on a show hosted by pro-Kremlin television host Vladimir Solovyov.

Amid the March 2018 Russian presidential elections, Putin personally suggested that Russian nationals indicted as part of the Mueller investigation for U.S. election interference may not be ethnically Russian because they could have Jewish ancestry. “Maybe they are not even Russians, but Ukrainians, Tatars, or Jews, but with Russian citizenship, which should also be checked,” he said.

According to a March 29, 2018, Washington Institute report, these kinds of antisemitic comments raise suspicion about Western interference in Russian affairs. “Putin most likely made the statement for cynical and pragmatic reasons,” writes senior fellow Anna Borshchevskata. “In the context of the upcoming March 18 presidential election, he was rallying support and reinforcing the ‘besieged fortress’ anti-Western narrative.”

Understanding Russia’s Antisemitic Propaganda in Latin America

Russia’s antisemitic narratives are disseminated by its state press and foreign ministries in Latin America as a means of creating mistrust against the United States and Western democracies. Some of these narratives are also amplified in Spanish by social media accounts such as @DaniMayakovski, which has more than 144,000 followers, and @LatinosPorPutin, which are often cited by Venezuela’s backed-media Telesur and Cuba regime state media. These handles have been known to reference Rothschild tropes vilifying Tel Aviv in comments about the Israel-Hamas war.

DNA researchers also found at least 137 conspiracy-oriented articles referencing the Rothschilds in Sputnik’s Spanish language edition that targets Central and South America.

On Oct. 8, Sputnik Mundo published an article in Spanish with the headline: “Emmanuel Macron, the Rothschild protégé turned French president?” Citing the London-based Financial Times, Sputnik referenced Macron’s past work with Rothschild & Co. investment bank from 2008 to 2012 to create the inference that the French president is controlled by a shadow network of elites.

Sputnik reported that Macron raised funds “from a powerful network of bankers, financiers, and businessmen …” and compounds that fact with the allegation that “French laws allowed Macron’s campaign to keep its list of donors secret.” The story adds that “upon taking office, Macron carried out a series of measures for the wealthy and businesses. In particular, he reduced the official corporate tax rate from 33% to 25%, slashed taxes for manufacturers, introduced a flat 30% tax on investment income, and replaced the wealth tax on the very rich with a tax on real estate assets valued at more than 1.3 million euros.”

This story follows recent efforts by both Moscow and Tehran to discredit the 2024 French elections and undermine the Paris Olympics as part of Operation Overload, a Kremlin propaganda campaign aimed at newsrooms. Since antisemitic narratives frequently link prominent Jewish families such as the Rothschilds to world domination, labeling Macron as a “Rothschild protégé” implies his presidency is influenced by Jewish elites.

In a separate attempt to discredit its enemies in Kyiv, Moscow’s state-controlled media claims that Ukraine has become the latest target of the Rothschilds. In a Sept. 11, 2024 article, Sputnik Mundo reported that the Rothschilds have profited from the 2014 Maidan uprising, which the article refers to as “the 2014 neo-Nazi coup.”

This headline reflects longstanding Kremlin narratives that mischaracterize the 2014 Maidan uprising as a CIA-sponsored “coup” that occupied the Ukrainian government with installed neo-Nazis. In reality, the 2014 Maidan Revolution was an organic act of civil unrest in which the Ukrainian people mobilized to remove Viktor Yanukovych, a member of the pro-Russia Party of Regions who was ultimately found guilty of treason. Since then, Ukraine has held democratic elections and most recently elected Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish.

DNA found Russian state press articles suggesting the Rothschilds were creating division within Ukraine’s government for profit as early as 2017. That year, Sputnik published an Oct. 27 article suggesting that Ukraine’s national oil and gas company, Naftogaz, was “taking advantage of the disagreement between the Ukrainian government and the European Union to create the gas transit company Operador GTS of Ukraine” and “to strengthen its position, Naftogaz attracted the influential financial empire of the Rothschilds,” which it said would receive millions of dollars “for their services.”

The end of the article reminds the reader that Ukraine’s Naftogaz company already has a contract with Russia’s state-owned energy company, Gazprom. By suggesting that “Ukraine is the new goal of the Rothschilds,” Moscow laid the groundwork to suggest that Jews were working to undermine the economic relationship between Russia and Ukraine and potentially disrupt Ukraine’s energy supply.

On Sept. 11, 2024, Sputnik Mundo suggested that the Rothschilds have “been deeply involved in Ukraine’s affairs since the 2014 coup d’état,” asserting that the family was profiting billions from “restructuring Ukraine’s debt.” In reality, Rothschild & Co. has been acting as Ukraine’s adviser, and its financial advice has reportedly saved Kyiv $11.4 billion. Rothschild & Co. has also signed the Ukraine Business Compact, an international business pact aimed at finding investors willing to help rebuild the war-torn country in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion.

This type of narrative was asserted in a Sept. 17, 2024, Sputnik Mundo article about the history of the Rothschilds that alleged the dynasty “emerg[ed] at the height of the European colonial empires … bet on the United Kingdom against France during the Napoleonic wars [and] “financed Hessian mercenary soldiers … to consolidate their fortune.” An earlier, similar version of this narrative appeared in Spanish seven years prior on Reseau International, a French news site that was accused in 2023 of promoting Kremlin narratives about the Ukraine war.

The Sept. 17 Sputnik Mundo article, which purports to explain “how the Rothschilds use their immense wealth to influence world politics,” was quickly amplified on the X social media account of Rafael Araya Masry, a Chilean news correspondent who also serves on the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Central Council. It was also amplified on a Bolivian news site, Contacto Sur, which often links to numerous Russian-owned sites such as Noticias latam.com and RT Actualidad. The Kremlin-sponsored narrative was additionally published on the cubasoberana.com website, which is published in Portuguese.

A DNA search determined the cubasoberana.com website’s current registration is private but that it was a sponsor of the 2022 People’s Summit for Democracy, which was organized as “a counter to President Joe Biden’s … Summit of the Americas.” Despite its name, The ‘People’s Summit for Democracy’ united various pro-Cuba communist regime groups, supporters of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez, and media organizations like Resumen Latinoamericano, which reportedly* draws content from Tertulias en Cuarentena–a Spain-based YouTube channel known for launching “attacks [on] those who consider Hezbollah, a terrorist organization.”

A similar but separate narrative was pushed earlier in a February 2024 Sputnik Mundo article that alleged Jewish financier George Soros was conspiring with the U.S. Agency for International Development to influence Catalonian independence from Spain. By falsely alleging that Soros and USAID conspired to ignite a civil war in Spain and that the Rothschilds are exploiting Ukraine’s tragedies, Russia is able to trigger Latin America’s historical memory of similar events, such as the United Fruit Company’s role in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état that deposed democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz.

These kinds of stories trigger Latin American fears of neocolonial exploitation and suggest that Jews, Israel, and Western democracies such as the United States and France conspire with one another to exploit Central and South America.

See “Iran increases presence in Latin America,” an Oct. 30, 2023, Dialogo Americas report published by U.S. Southern Command, citing data from Reichman University’s Institute for Counter-Terrorism

Russia Propaganda Alert

The Russia Propaganda Alert is a media analysis initiative of the Digital News Association (DNA) that serves as a resource to detect Russian narratives targeting Spanish-language news outlets in Latin America and the Western Hemisphere. DNA analysts and journalists review the daily dissemination of Russian foreign content on news sites, social media platforms, state-owned media, and the personal pages of Russian foreign officials as part of its Latin America Disinformation Tracking Initiative.

Russian Propaganda Alert Coordinators

David A. Satter

David A. Satter is an American journalist and historian who writes about Russia and the Soviet Union. He has authored books and articles about the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of post-Soviet Russia. Mr. Satter is a member of the board of the Digital News Association and was expelled from the Russian Federation in 2013.

Jeffrey Scott Shapiro

Jeffrey S. Shapiro is an investigative journalist and former Washington, D.C. prosecutor. He has reported on several high-profile criminal and political cases, including the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, the 2011 military intervention in Libya, and U.S. military cooperation with the Russian space program. Mr. Shapiro is a board member of the Digital News Association and was banned from entering Russia in 2023.

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