Study maps how Russian domestic news spreads to foreign audiences on Facebook

While Russia’s international broadcasters (RT and Sputnik) and troll farms have been widely examined, little is known about the foreign public spaces amplifying Russia’s domestic news content, specifically after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This article examines the types of foreign Facebook spaces that amplified Russia’s domestic news during wartime and how they differed in sharing content from outlets classified as war-critical versus war-uncritical (toward Russia’s war against Ukraine). Analysing 912 non-Russian Facebook public spaces that shared URLs to 70 Russian-language domestic news websites in the first six months of the full-scale war, the authors developed a typology based on ties to Russia and thematic orientation. Their findings reveal three patterns. First, linguistic proximity acts as a dual conduit, circulating both war-uncritical and war-critical news URLs. Second, ideologically aligned and Russia-affiliated spaces function as relatively insulated conduits, almost uniformly amplifying war-uncritical news URLs. Third, spaces linked to former European socialist states tilt toward war-uncritical news URL sharing, though war-critical news URL sharing offsets this imbalance with higher posting intensity. These dynamics show how authoritarian information influence is structured through both targeted supply and audience-driven uptake, extending debates on transnational news dissemination and Russia’s digital information influence.