By Entorno | 2025-07-08

RT, the Kremlin-backed news network, has begun broadcasting on Chilean public television, prompting a growing political, media and diplomatic backlash.

The move, which came into effect on June 16 through a deal with Telecanal, allows Chilean viewers to watch RT Español over free TV for the first time.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova celebrated the expansion of Moscow's soft power.

"RT now holds a leading position in the region compared to other international Spanish-language news channels," she said at a news briefing on July 2.

The channel's audience and credibility are growing despite a "a smear campaign by pro-Western forces," said Zakharova.

RT now appears on public digital platforms in 10 Latin American countries, including Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala and now Chile.

Warnings of a Trojan horse

But in Chile, critics say the move poses deeper risks. In a July 1 column for AthenaLab, Sascha Hannig, a doctoral candidate in international law at Hitotsubashi University in Japan, called the agreement with Telecanal "opaque and unscrutinized," adding that it exposes two major vulnerabilities: "the country's information security and the absence of democratic safeguards against disinformation campaigns."

Authoritarian state-run outlets like RT, Venezuela's Telesur or China's CGTN often present a distorted, propagandistic view of reality, said Hannig. "They use tactics like whataboutism" to deflect and confuse, or rely on unverified claims that cross into outright disinformation, she wrote.

"RT has aired false reports about neo-Nazi groups and biochemical labs in Ukraine and has downplayed the scale and cost of Russia's invasion while echoing Moscow's expansionist rhetoric," she added.

Chile's muted response highlights a failure to reckon with the political and cognitive risks posed by foreign state media, especially during a polarized election year, said Hannig.

By contrast, the European Union banned RT and Sputnik in 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine and expanded that ban in late 2024 to include four more Kremlin-aligned outlets.

An information 'weapon'

Ian Garner, a historian at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw and a scholar of Russian propaganda, echoed those concerns in an interview with Chilean daily La Tercera on July 5.

"RT has been around for almost two decades and is clearly part of Russia's information warfare," he said. "Its director, Margarita Simonyan, described it as a weapon of war during the 2008 conflict with Georgia."

According to Garner, RT does not rely solely on its television signal. "Its strategy is to spread distorted content online, inflame divisions and provoke conflict," he said. "The goal is to convince people that no one can agree on anything, democracy is broken and solutions are impossible."

Violetta Udovik, a Ukrainian political scientist and historian, called RT "a fully state-controlled propaganda tool used to justify Russia's war on Ukraine and promote its authoritarian model." Broadcasting it via Chile's public airwaves, she told La Tercera, "undermines international law and exploits democratic spaces to spread disinformation."

The arrival of RT should not be seen in isolation, said Udovik. Russia, she said, maintains regional alliances with authoritarian governments like those of Venezuela and Cuba, and may use the channel to destabilize societies during moments of upheaval, such as Chile's 2019 social unrest.

"They spread messages that erode public trust in the rule of law," she said.

In November 2023, the US State Department publicly accused Russia of financing an ongoing, well-coordinated disinformation campaign across Latin America. The department claimed that the Kremlin had created a content hub, possibly based in Chile, to coordinate messaging with direct support from Moscow and participation from local journalists and opinion leaders throughout the region.

Democracy under pressure

"Russian propaganda is more dangerous today than during the Cold War," Udovik added. "Social media, AI [artificial intelligence] and digital platforms allow fake news to be produced and shared with unprecedented speed and sophistication. That's why I urge Chileans to think critically, check multiple sources and stay informed."

Chile's National Television Council (CNTV) stated in early July that it does not have the authority to censor foreign content. However, it acknowledged that "broadcasting content from a government engaged in war, such as Russia, raises legitimate concerns about protecting pluralism and democracy."

For now, RT remains on the air. Chilean authorities face a growing challenge: how to shield democratic discourse from foreign influence without violating press freedom. For many, the presence of RT is not just another foreign signal. It is a warning, broadcast in plain sight.