Mirroring and Metanarrative: Understanding Russia’s Information Influence Strategy in Latin America and the Caribbean

Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization. 2025. Vol. 33. No. 2. P. 107–138.

Косевич Е. Ю.

With the blurring of the boundaries between peace and war in their classical sense, confrontation is moving into the information space. This study traces the logic and main stages of the formation of the Russian information influence strategy in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Russia uses various methods to wage its information wars in the region: media and Spanishlanguage social networks play important roles, as does AI, which has become a key weapon for increasing the Kremlin’s influence in this part of the world. Russia’s information strategy in LAC, which went through four stages of activation—in 2008, 2014, 2016 and 2022—is grounded in the dichotomy of “mirroring” and “metanarrative,” and thus represents a unique approach to achieving information superiority.

Ключевые слова: Латинская Америка, мягкая сила, внешняя политика России, новая Россия, Latin America, 21st century Russia, Russian Foreign Policy, Russia’s soft power, Latin America and the Caribbean, Латинская Америка и Карибский бассейн