Russia and Iran in Latin America: Same Outlook, Similar Playbooks

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Russian influence operations are not only concerned with shaping attitudes toward foreign policy. In Colombia and Mexico, Russia has reportedly sought to sway the results of key elections in favor of Moscow’s preferred candidates, through its official media platforms as well as through networks of trolls, bots, and regional pro-Kremlin affiliates. In Mexico, RT Spanish broadcast a long-running video series entitled “The Battle for Mexico,” which cast then-candidate López Obrador in a favorable light as the only leader willing to confront the United States and preserve Mexican sovereignty. In Colombia, Russia-linked bots on Twitter (now known as X) were found to have promoted Gustavo Petro’s candidacy in 2022. The extent to which such efforts swayed the final result should be treated with a degree of caution, as both Petro and López Obrador won due to a confluence of factors. Nevertheless, election interference efforts remain among Moscow’s most corrosive tools to undermine democracy and sovereignty worldwide.

Iran’s Spanish-language media agency HispanTV has made similar strides in the region. In doing so, it has benefitted from partnerships with fellow authoritarian-leaning media outlets, which help amplify and advance its messages. National security analysts Douglas Farah and Alexa Tavarez have demonstrated, for instance, how Venezuelan outlet teleSUR, RT, and HispanTV often cite and recite one another’s work and rely on similar sets of pro-authoritarian journalists based in the region to convey their messages. These so-called “super spreaders” advance common messages critiquing U.S. policy toward the region as imperialist and uplifting the approaches of Iran, Russia, and China as seeking to challenge malign U.S. hegemony while encouraging economic development among LAC countries.

The convergence between Russian and Iranian influence operations could be observed less than a month before the onset of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. On January 28, 2022, an article by Pablo Jofré Leal appeared in HispanTV calling for an “alliance against [U.S.] hegemony” to be spearheaded by Russia, China, and Iran. Leal, a Chilean journalist and frequent contributor to HispanTV, RT Spanish, teleSUR, and many affiliated websites, has acted as a key node for translating messages from Moscow and Tehran for a regional audience.

Beyond the traditional media space, organizations like Nova Resistência, a neofascist organization and part of the broader New Resistance organization inspired by the ideas of Kremlin-backed philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, have worked not only to advance pro-Russian messages but also to praise the actions of Iran and Hezbollah. A 2023 U.S. Department of State report found that the Brazilian Nova Resistência chapter was “particularly active” in convening events, writing articles, and disseminating physical pamphlets and posters advancing pro-Kremlin narratives.

Even absent formal coordination between Iran and Russia in the information space, their methods and objectives for fomenting anti-U.S. sentiment enjoy strong complementarity. As the cases of Pablo Jofré Leal and Nova Resistência also demonstrate, the audience for such messaging within LAC enjoys a high degree of overlap.

Energy and Economics

Russia’s economic clout in LAC is marginal, especially when compared to that of the United States and the European Union, which remain the key investors in the hemisphere, comprising 38 percent and 17 percent of Latin America’s foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in 2022, respectively. The major recipients of Russian FDI in the region include Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, and these investments tend to focus on the extractive sectors, including minerals, oil, and gas. Bilateral trade between Russia and LAC countries stands at around $12 billion, with Russia mainly exporting fertilizers, mineral fuels, iron, and steel to the region (primarily to Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico).

Despite Russia’s small economic footprint in LAC, the Kremlin has expressed strengthened interest in the region’s energy sector in recent years and, in certain cases, has even managed to challenge the Western companies operating on the ground. Brazil presents a noteworthy example in this regard, replacing Turkey as the largest purchaser of Russian diesel in October 2023. Overall in 2023, Brazil imported 6.1 million tons of diesel with a value of $4.5 billion from Russia—a 6,000 percent increase from the 101,000 tons of Russian diesel worth $95 million that it imported in 2022. Such a sharp rise in Russian diesel market share in Brazil, from virtually zero in 2022 to 50 percent in 2023 and 70 percent in 2024, has in large part resulted from its competitive pricing—one of the effects of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Highly reliant on cheap diesel to keep its economy moving, Brazil’s decision to pivot away from the United States in favor of Russia can further increase Moscow’s diplomatic and economic ties with Brasília, securing support from the largest country in the region.

Besides Brazil, Cuba and Venezuela also represent interesting case studies for Russia’s renewed focus on making inroads into the Western Hemisphere’s energy sector. In March 2023, Igor Sechin, the head of Russia’s state oil company Rosneft, visited Havana and Caracas to discuss energy cooperation with the two countries. A year later, 90,000 metric tons of Russian oil arrived in Cuba to offer some relief to an island mired in power outages and gasoline shortages. Sanctioned by the United States, Cuba’s communist government has once again found itself beholden to the Kremlin, bringing additional revenue and economic and political opportunities to Russia. In the case of Venezuela, while Rosneft was pressured to cease its operations in Venezuela in 2020, Sechin’s visit amid the war in Ukraine and international sanctions imposed against Russia might imply and lead to renewed energy cooperation between the two countries. (In the past, Moscow relied on Rosneft to both expand the company’s portfolio and advance the country’s geopolitical interests vis-à-vis Caracas.) These intentions were reiterated during Lavrov’s visit to Venezuela in February 2024, with the Russian foreign minister promising to boost joint oil and gas production and foster “peaceful use of nuclear energy” in the country.

In some instances, however, Moscow’s efforts have gone nowhere. In Argentina, Novatek—Russia’s largest producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG)—reportedly offered the Argentinian government the technology to build an LNG plant, but talks between the two parties broke off without a deal. In Bolivia, Gazprom—a Russian state-owned oil and gas company that has been present in the country for more than a decade—has failed to drill and develop any natural gas or oil fields during this period, prompting criticism from local experts.

Russia has nevertheless made some advances in the clean energy and mining space, with state-owned firm Rosatom signing a $450 million deal in 2023 as part of a bid with China to develop Bolivia’s lithium reserves, estimated as the largest in the hemisphere. Overall, while Latin America’s energy sector is promising for Russia—especially following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has forced Russian companies to look elsewhere for energy deals and investments—it is still rife with risks, limitations, and competition.

Like Russia, Iran’s economic influence in the hemisphere has been limited and primarily focused on energy cooperation. In Venezuela, Iran’s presence has had an outsized impact on the ability of the government of Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, to remain in power. Iran’s expertise navigating mass international pressure was invaluable for the Maduro regime to retain oil revenues in the face of U.S. sectoral sanctions on the energy sector after the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis. Venezuela shipped crude oil to Iran, Russia, and China in return for financial assistance and cheap gasoline to maintain fuel subsidies in a time of economic turmoil. Venezuela has also relied upon Iranian technical assistance, inking a deal with Tehran in 2022 to help repair Venezuela’s El Palito refinery to the tune of some €110 million (up to $120 million). Iranian technical support has been essential as Venezuela struggles to bring its hollowed-out oil sector back to life in anticipation of the lifting of sanctions. Tehran also significantly benefits from this arrangement, having leveraged its partnership with the Maduro regime to build and sell Iranian cars and reportedly acquire over a million hectares of farmland in Venezuela to support Iran’s agricultural sector.

The cases discussed above show that the energy sector could be another area ripe for cooperation between Iran, Russia, and their allies in the Western Hemisphere, especially Venezuela. While all three countries are ostensibly competitors in the global oil market, the layers of sanctions they face have engendered a peculiar form of covert camaraderie. Russian joint oil ventures with Venezuela produced an estimated 120,000 barrels per day in 2022, or more than one-sixth of the country’s total oil production. Venezuela, in turn, has relied heavily on Iranian tankers to launder its oil and deliver it to buyers—most often to China. Each country has therefore seemingly intuited that they have more to gain from attempting to subvert U.S.-led sanctions together than by forging their own path.

This arrangement appears to have frayed in the months following the October 2023 Barbados Accords, when the United States began issuing licenses to companies to resume oil production in Venezuela. Now able to trade oil with U.S. firms for cash in hand rather than fuel, Venezuela’s trade with Iran plummeted from 2022 to 2023, leading to a diplomatic scramble by the two countries to restore their alliance. However, with the reimposition of U.S. oil sanctions on Venezuela in April 2024, energy cooperation between Venezuela, Iran, and Russia may be set to increase once more.

Military-Security Cooperation

Russia’s engagement with LAC countries has been guided by the aforementioned Primakov doctrine—the idea that Russia should engage with the “near abroad” of the United States in response to Washington’s meddling in internal affairs of the countries Moscow views as its “near abroad.” This is particularly true against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. For instance, in June 2022, Nicaraguan president Ortega authorized the entry of Russian troops, military ships, and aircraft into Nicaragua to assist with military training, law enforcement, and humanitarian aid. Russian state media has linked the Russian military deployment in the country to U.S. engagement with Ukraine, with one television host stating, “If American missile systems can nearly reach Moscow from Ukrainian territory, it is time for Russia to roll out something powerful closer to the American city upon a hill.” According to some estimates, up to 3,700 Russian troops have participated in different military trainings and exchanges with the Nicaraguan army between 2014 and 2024. Russia has also operated a Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) satellite ground station in Nicaragua since 2017 (Moscow also operates four other ground stations further south in Brazil). Located just outside of the capital, Managua, the facility has raised concerns that it could be used to intercept satellite communications close to the equator, where many of the U.S. critical assets are located in geostationary orbits. Finally, Moscow has helped train the Nicaraguan National Police, implicated in serious human rights abuses, from its U.S.-sanctioned counternarcotics center, also in Managua.

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