Kremlin Ramps up Spending on Foreign Youth and Journalists Programs to Promote Its Image Abroad
This includes organizing trips to Russia for young foreigners and trainings for foreign journalists on “debunking anti-Russian myths”
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Rossotrudnichestvo, a federal agency that promotes Russian interests abroad, is increasing spending on programs for foreign journalists, bloggers and young people. In the first four months of 2024, Rossotrudnichestvo announced relevant tenders for almost 230 million rubles — more than for the whole of 2023. Expenditures have increased significantly after the outbreak of a full-scale war.
In particular, the agency announced a tender for 130 million rubles for the Novoe Pokolenie (“New Generation”) program. Under this program, Rossotrudnichestvo annually pays for trips to Russia for a thousand young “representatives of social and political circles” from abroad. Excursions and meetings with politicians are organized for them. According to the description of the purchase, such visits “promote an objective perception in the world of the transformations taking place in Russian society.”
The program has been in place since 2011. According to former Rossotrudnichestvo head Eleonora Mitrofanova, the Novoe Pokolenie program allows promoting the concept of “horizontal diplomacy” and using “soft power” against “large number of Russophobic tendencies,” and foreign journalists “change their narrative” after a visit to Moscow.
Foreign journalists and bloggers are an important target audience for such Russian programs. As part of Novoe Pokolenie, foreign journalists are trained by the Kremlin’s main international propaganda project, the Sputnik news agency run by Russia Today news network director Margarita Simonyan.
Under this program, journalist Darinka Petrović from Republika Srpska, a Bosnian Serb-populated entity within the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Balkans, came to Russia in 2023. At Direct Line with Vladimir Putin [a question and answer event with the president] in December, she asked him what he thought about the future of the Balkans. She also mentioned that there is no Russian media in Republika Srpska, “but there is a flood of Western media,” to which Putin replied that he would “think in that direction.”
“Washington-led Kyiv has crossed the ‘red lines’ outlined by Moscow, which was the basis for the start of the special military operation,” Darinka Petrović told Rossiyskaya Gazeta after the press conference. — “The situation in the DPR is reminiscent of the events in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and I realize that we lost then mainly through information warfare. Now we cannot allow a repetition of that history. In Donbas there is a struggle for a new multipolar world, Orthodoxy and Slavonicity.”

Darinka Petrović now works for the pro-Russian Alternativna TV of Banja Luka in Republika Srpska. In 2023, she produced a movie about the residents of Donbas and the Russian military, and interviewed Dmitry Peskov. For this she received awards from Moscow. In May 2024, she attended Putin’s inauguration and traveled to Crimea.
Together with her, Mina Milanko, a journalist from Serbia, traveled to Moscow. She works for RT Balkan, a Serbian-language division of Russia Today launched in 2022. Mina Milanko publishes mainly news based on statements of Russian officials and politicians. Her portfolio also includes a large complimentary article dedicated to Ramzan Kadyrov’s birthday titled “The devil wears Prada, and he wears Prada and a beard. The leader of Chechnya, who was tried several times and even ‘buried’ alive, celebrates his 47th birthday in spite of his enemies.”
Another participant from Serbia, blogger Jelena Đekić, described her impressions of Russia in her Instagram as follows: “Luxury — if I had to describe Moscow in one word, this would be it. Marble, granite, gold, people in furs, jeeps and long black limousines everywhere in the city, like from Hollywood movies. Moreover, Russians like to eat caviar for breakfast — life in imperial style.”
Darinka Petrović and Mina Milanko refused to talk to the IStories journalist about their participation in the program.
Among the 2023 participants was Hayk Derzyan, a member of the Council of Republican Party of Armenia and curator of the party’s political school. He told IStories that he visited Nizhny Novgorod, where he met with representatives of the authorities and the city mayor’s office. After the trip, Hayk opened his media school in Armenia with the support of Rossotrudnichestvo. In it, 50 people learn, in his words, “media analysis, PR, marketing, how to create reels and write posts.” As part of the media school, he plans to give participants tours of the local unit of the Russian propaganda media outlet Sputnik, where he himself hosts a program and talks to Russian officials and politicians.

“You have to realize that European and pro-Western propaganda has always won,” Hayk explains of his decision to work closely with the current Russian regime and its controlled media. — “But after that, the country remained a loser. I myself am a pro-Armenian person, neither pro-Russian nor pro-European. Those anti-Russian waves that are now in Armenia cannot positively affect the future of our country. I don’t want my country to turn into cannon fodder like several other countries. Despite the current situation in Armenia, Russia and Armenia remain strategic partners.”
In the first years after the launch of the Novoe Pokolenie program, many young leaders from Western countries, including the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and others, came to Russia under this program. In 2024, the programs are aimed at other regions: Rossotrudnichestvo encourages journalists and bloggers mainly from the CIS countries, Latin America, Muslim countries of the Middle East and Africa to participate in the SputnikPro project.
Also in 2023, Rossotrudnichestvo launched a new project for foreign journalists — the InterNovosti media school. School participants are taken on excursions around Moscow, including to the Komsomolskaya Pravda publishing house, the Ostankino TV center, and the Federation Council.

From the documents of Rossotrudnichestvo it is possible to understand what foreign colleagues are taught by propagandists from Komsomolskaya Pravda. “Today’s international situation is not conducive to the creation of a positive image of Russia in the media of neighboring states,” the description of the master classes’ public procurement tells. — “Blatant lies, repetition of fakes, aggressive anti-Russian and anti-Soviet postulates due to the confrontation between Russia and the West can lead to the formation of a permanent negative information field around our country.” Komsomolskaya Pravda employees teach their colleagues “the canons of classical journalism” and offer them “certain meanings.” Examples of meanings include the following: “even in difficult times, Russia has extended a helping hand to other countries, helping them not only to survive, but also to develop;” “debunking anti-Russian myths imposed by Western propaganda.”
The target audience of these master classes are journalists and bloggers from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the limited recognition states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
In December 2023, Polina Kostina, a blogger from Uzbekistan, was among them. She told IStories that she enjoyed the trip, met people from other countries, studied social media and video work. She did not discuss issues related to the political part of the training and the war in Ukraine: “I don’t discuss these issues. I am not a politician, I am not in the subject at all. I live in Uzbekistan, I have a travel blog. I was more interested in showing Moscow to my subscribers, visiting some entertainment events and excursions.”
In addition to organizing trips, in April 2024, Rossotrudnichestvo placed a public procurement for 85 million rubles to organize a contest and awards for foreign journalists. The prize fund of the contest is 6.2 million rubles. The winners’ projects should broadcast “a positive agenda aimed at strengthening Russia’s influence in the international space.” In 2022, Rossotrudnichestvo spent 40 million rubles to organize such a contest. Among the jury members was, for example, one of the most ardent Russian propagandists, Vladimir Solovyov. As Rossotrudnichestvo notes, the winners in the category “for objective coverage of the special military operation” were awarded for daring to go “against the current, preferring objectivity to conjuncture.”

One of the winners was journalist Kosti Heiskanen. He traveled to the occupied territories of Ukraine and told about how “Finnish and Swedish mercenaries were looting in Avdeevka” without providing evidence. “Kosti Heiskanen’s name may not mean anything to Finnish readers, but during the war in Ukraine he has been in the headlines of Russian news every week,” writes the Finnish newspaper Ilta Sanomat. — “He is valuable to the Russian media precisely because he can be called a Finn. For many Russians, ‘Finnish’ is synonymous with reliability and quality, so this effectively creates an illusion of credibility for propaganda.”
Rossotrudnichestvo also pays separately for “work with opinion leaders and media representatives” abroad to build “a pool of media workers loyal to Russia” and “ideological beliefs of the journalistic community” consonant with the Russian regime, and orders video for “information campaigns on foreign and Russian TV channels to promote the activities of the Russian Federation.”
In February 2024, Putin instructed the government to increase spending on such projects: “Russia has been and remains a stronghold of traditional values on which human civilization is built. Our choice is shared by the majority of people in the world, including millions of citizens of Western countries.” Bringing the so-called traditional values to the world is one of the main tasks of Rossotrudnichestvo. In 2022, one of the programs for foreigners was literally called “strengthening spiritual staples.”