Selling Russia to the Global South(s): how Russia adapts strategic narratives to audiences in Latin America and Africa

Although Russia’s pivot to the Global South is widely acknowledged, little is known about how it tailors messaging to different audiences covered by this geographical label. More generally, despite extensive work on strategic narratives in international relations, little attention has been paid to how disinformation and propaganda are diversified and adapted across audiences. Identifying and understanding adaptation strategies is vital for alerting target audiences to how foreign actors seek to influence them. We address this dual gap by examining whether and how Russia adapts two revolutionary narratives challenging the liberal order – multipolarity and neocolonialism – to different audiences in the Global South. Using narrative analysis, we systematically examine content produced by six different regional editions of the Russian state-sponsored media outlets RT and Sputnik. The results show that Russia tailors the content of its revolutionary narratives across three audiences; international English-speaking audiences, French-speaking audiences, and Spanish-speaking audiences. The most pronounced differences emerge between Spanish-language editions targeting Latin America and French-language editions targeting Africa. We conclude by discussing how these patterns of adaptation may reflect both regional contexts and broader strategic objectives, highlighting the need to understand propaganda narratives not as globally uniform messages, but as repertoires of audience-specific appeals.