As the North American Aerospace Defense Command prepares for its traditional tracking of Santa’s journey around the globe on December 24, it’s also a suitable time to see how well the pro-Kremlin media covers the planet.
Based on our research, we were able to come up with close to 30 countries where Sputnik has created a web page. Those countries range from Vietnam to Armenia and include languages like Arabic, Dari, and Persian.
While some Sputniks have up to three different languages per country, the total number of different URLs is 49. But what’s even more impressive is the fact that 31 of those URLs are in our database, meaning that they have been spreading disinformation. The societies affected range from Uzbekistan to Belarus, and from Germany to Spain.
In other words: while Santa flies around the world once a year, pro-Kremlin disinformation does the same, but on a daily basis.
Last week, pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets were fighting back against the World Anti-Doping Agency’s decision to ban Russia from the Olympics. As a response, accusations of doping were described as a theater of the absurd, a weapon against Russia, and revenge for Russian athletes’ victories. In reality, Russia could have made a serious attempt to stop its state-sponsored doping system, but evidently decided not to.