New Voices, Old Friends: How Russia Targets Its Messaging in the Global South

Michel's report addresses a gap that has become increasingly consequential as Western counter-FIMI attention has concentrated on the European theatre: Russia's distinct and evolving approach to information operations in the Global South. The analysis documents how Russian state and proxy actors adapt their messaging to local political cultures, grievances, and media ecosystems across Africa and Latin America — deploying anti-colonial and anti-Western narratives that resonate in ways that standard Western counter-narrative frameworks are poorly equipped to address.

The report's most useful contribution is its granularity on the targeting logic. Rather than treating the Global South as a monolithic audience, Michel identifies the differentiated approaches Russia deploys across regional contexts — exploiting French post-colonial resentment in the Sahel, leveraging existing anti-American sentiment in Latin America, and building relationships with local media infrastructure that give Russian narratives an appearance of indigenous origin. For practitioners designing resilience programmes or counter-narrative strategies that extend beyond the Euro-Atlantic, this analytical baseline is essential reading.