(Read Part 1)

Just as KGB agents did during the Cold War, Vladimir Putin’s current proxies continue to seize upon divisive elements within American society in order to exploit them. Their aim is to create — or deepen — the chasm of political opinion sparked by issues such as tariffs, protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), or Washington’s foreign policy.

Operating in coordination with regional allies — such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua — Russian media outlets work to discredit dissident voices and stifle pro-democracy movements.

In 2018, for instance, RT en Español broadcasted content favorable to the draft of the new Castroist constitution. In 2020, it did the same, this time in support of a brand-new Family Code. In both instances, the Christians leading civil society’s resistance against these policies were portrayed merely as a fringe minority or as a group that the regime needed to crush. Indeed, the Kremlin played a direct role spreading these attacks.

According to analyst Hugo Marcelo Balderrama, the works of Soviet military theorists — such as Generals Makhmut Gareev, Vladimir Slipchenko, Sergei Bogdanov, and Valery Gerasimov — “provide a useful framework for understanding the Russian strategy of expanding the scope of confrontation — with the assistance of Hugo Chávez, Lula da Silva, Daniel Ortega, and Fidel Castro — beyond the realm of conventional warfare and into a broad spectrum of activities.” One such activity is disinformation.

In this regard, Havana remains an open wound for both regional security and that of the United States. As the digital newspaper Diario de Cuba documented in a comprehensive report, numerous recent examples demonstrate the close coordination between the Castro regime’s media apparatus and that of its Eurasian ally.

In January 2025, executives from Sputnik — Russia’s official news agency and a key pillar of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine — expressed interest in co-producing content with the Cuban regime’s media arm, Ideas Multimedios. Three months later, the official portal Cubadebate and Sputnik signed a memorandum of cooperation in Havana to “expand partnerships in the international sphere, coverage of news regarding relations between Cuba and Russia, and international news in Spanish.”

In August of that same year, Cuba’s Institute of Information and Social Communication and Sputnik signed an agreement to collaborate on covering significant bilateral events, as well as “on the dissemination of topics of global significance.”

In October — when the Russian news channel Russia Today, a central pillar of the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns, marked its 20th anniversary — Miguel Díaz-Canel promoted the outlet through a short video posted on his X account, in which he celebrated the fact that the Russian media outlet allows the Cuban regime to speak “its truths.”

In May 2023, it came to light that the Southern Federal University and Havana University had signed an agreement to establish an Advanced Information Technologies Laboratory.

That agreement, along with others, was reached during a meeting between Russia’s Deputy Minister of Digital Development, Bella Cherkesova, and the President of Cuba’s Institute of Information and Social Communication, Alfonso Noya Martínez, as reported at the time by the TASS news agency.

“Russia and Cuba also agreed to jointly train media industry personnel, assist one another in content creation, and launch radio projects,” noted the statement released following the agreement.

In January, President Trump declared a national emergency regarding Cuba as a measure aimed at protecting U.S. national security and foreign policy against what he characterized as “malign actions by the Cuban regime.”

The document noted that the regime maintains close alignment with “numerous hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors,” including Russia. Havana facilitates the development of infrastructure — as well as military and intelligence capabilities — for these actors, which “directly threaten the national security of the United States.” He was not mistaken.

There is no other way to put it: Russia’s influence in Spanish-speaking America challenges the Donroe Doctrine — the concept that this hemisphere must serve as a sphere of influence and security for the United States rather than for foreign powers or anti-American forces.

Maintaining primacy in this neighborhood cannot be focused solely on armaments or on controlling drug trafficking; it must also address that ethereal yet potent weapon which — operating through disinformation — is the construction of narratives.