The launch of RT (formerly Russia Today) in India has triggered significant concern among media analysts and international watchdogs, who view the network’s expansion as a calculated effort to reshape the regional information landscape. According to Precious Chatterje-Doody, a senior lecturer at the Open University and an expert on Russian disinformation, RT’s strategy is not to invent social controversies from whole cloth, but rather to skillfully exploit and amplify pre-existing public debates. By inserting itself into discussions about global inequalities or international power dynamics, RT effectively steers local sentiment in a direction that aligns with Kremlin foreign policy, often relying on historical revisionism and the peddling of false narratives, particularly regarding the war in Ukraine.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has documented a systematic pattern in RT India’s editorial output, which consistently frames the United States and Ukraine as “destabilizing forces” in the global order. These narratives are strategically woven into the broader discourse of India’s “rise to power,” positioning the Moscow-New Delhi partnership as an essential pillar of Indian sovereignty. This alignment was highlighted in March by a dedicated RT program on the Donbas region, which featured contributors from “International Reporters”—a platform identified by researchers as a Kremlin-funded influence operation that mimics journalistic conventions to propagate state-sanctioned disinformation.
The fundamental danger, according to experts, lies in the convergence of RT’s geopolitical agenda with internal Indian political dynamics. Chatterje-Doody notes that RT has a long history of flirting with—or outright endorsing—conspiracy theories that permeate fragmented media environments. Because the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has its own track record of leveraging politically-motivated conspiracy theories, there is a clear risk of a “synergistic effect” where local political narratives harmonize with Russian state objectives. RT rarely operates in a silo; instead, it functions as a highly visible component of a much larger, often opaque, foreign policy apparatus designed to influence Western and emerging powers alike.
This cultural and informational penetration is underpinned by an aggressive rollout of media cooperation agreements solidified during Vladimir Putin’s state visit to India in December 2025. These deals represent a structural integration between the Kremlin and the Indian media establishment. Notably, the Press Trust of India has entered into a pact with the Russian state news agency TASS, while the National Media Group—a titan of Russian pro-Kremlin media—has signed far-reaching cooperation agreements with Prasar Bharati, India’s public broadcaster, which boasts a reach of 98% of the country’s population.
The sheer scale of these partnerships is unprecedented. Prasar Bharati has inked multiple memorandums of understanding with a suite of Russian entities, including Gazprom-Media Holding and the parent company of RT, ANO TV-Novosti. Complementing these state-level agreements are private-sector collaborations, such as the strategic partnership between Asian News International (ANI) and the Izvestia Multimedia Information Center. By embedding Russian influence directly into the infrastructure of India’s most prominent news agencies and public media, the Kremlin has secured a potent mechanism to disseminate its worldview directly to hundreds of millions of Indian citizens.
Ultimately, the emergence of RT in India serves as a case study in how modern disinformation campaigns transcend traditional propaganda. By operating at the intersection of legitimate Indian national interests and anti-Western geopolitical rhetoric, Russia is effectively outsourcing its narrative to local platforms. As this network of partnerships deepens, the line between indigenous reporting and state-funded foreign influence grows increasingly thin, creating a complex media environment where the distinction between public interest journalism and strategic deception continues to erode.
