"Russian agents linked to the Kremlin spent much of 2024 working on secretive operations to infiltrate Argentina’s media to discredit the country’s new far-right libertarian president, Javier Milei, according to leaked documents seen by openDemocracy.
In the run-up to his election victory in December 2023, Milei began seeking favour with Joe Biden’s administration in the US. While the pair were unlikely to see eye to eye on Milei’s domestic politics – he famously appeared on stage brandishing the chainsaw he was going to use to “destroy the state from within” – Milei adopted US-friendly geopolitical positions, including support for Ukraine, even inviting Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to his inauguration and hosting him in the presidential palace.
This support appears to have ruffled feathers in Moscow. A propaganda network backed by Russian foreign intelligence and internally known as ‘the Company’ began working to undermine Milei’s government and further divide Argentina’s already polarised society, according to a tranche of Russian-language documents obtained by The Continent, an African news outlet, and shared with a consortium of investigative newsrooms including openDemocracy, Dossier Center, iStories, All Eyes on Wagner and Forbidden Stories.
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Its most intensive campaign, though, involved creating 'a network for the distribution of media content in Argentine mass media and the local segment of social networks'."
