USIP Releases Report on Russian Influence Campaigns in Latin America

On 17 Octo­ber 2023, the Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace released a new report on how Moscow has been inten­si­fy­ing its dis­in­for­ma­tion and influ­ence cam­paigns in Latin Amer­i­ca. These efforts, aimed at restor­ing Rus­si­a’s glob­al sta­tus and coun­ter­ing the West­ern lib­er­al order led by the Unit­ed States, have suc­cess­ful­ly exploit­ed region­al dis­trust towards the U.S. Rus­sia por­trays itself as a less intru­sive alter­na­tive to the U.S., which it char­ac­ter­izes as focused on resource extrac­tion and enforc­ing unsuit­able eco­nom­ic poli­cies. The report high­lights the effi­cien­cy of Russ­ian infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions, which lever­age media plat­forms and a net­work of influ­encers span­ning jour­nal­ists, diplo­mats, and intel­lec­tu­als from var­i­ous polit­i­cal spec­trums. This influ­ence has increased notably around Rus­si­a’s 2014 and 2022 inva­sions of Ukraine, lead­ing to changes in pub­lic opin­ion and Latin Amer­i­can gov­ern­ments’ reluc­tance to sup­port Ukraine or par­tic­i­pate in sanc­tions against Rus­sia. How­ev­er, the Unit­ed States still main­tains alliances in the region, offer­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to coun­ter­act Rus­si­a’s grow­ing influ­ence in this strate­gi­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant area for Washington.