Russia’s state-funded broadcaster RT has opened a new front in its global media push with the launch of RT India in New Delhi, unveiled personally by President Vladimir Putin during his state visit.
The channel begins life with a staff of more than 100 and four daily news programmes in English, described by its parent as one of its largest overseas operations to date.
The launch coincides with five media cooperation agreements between India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati and Russian outlets Gazprom-Media Holding, National Media Group, BIG ASIA, ANO TV-Novosti (the operator of RT) and TV BRICS. According to India’s Ministry of External Affairs, the memoranda envisage broader collaboration in broadcasting, content sharing and information exchange, and build on an existing MoU between Prasar Bharati and TV-Novosti, now supplemented by an addendum signed in the presence of Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Dialogue Began Decades Ago, We’re Just Turning Up The Volume
Namaste, India! pic.twitter.com/s81vvBYzH3
— RT_India (@RT_India_news) December 5, 2025
RT India’s own statement presents the venture as a contribution to “traditional ties” and the “growing influence” of India and Russia in a multipolar world, with an explicit aim of helping to bypass what both capitals describe as a Western “monopoly” in the global media space. The language fits a wider Russian narrative that portrays its international broadcasters as corrective platforms balancing Western outlets rather than as instruments of state policy.
However, outside India, regulators and governments have taken a very different view of RT’s role. In March 2022 the European Union suspended the broadcasting of RT and Sputnik in the bloc, arguing that the channels were directly controlled by the Kremlin and used systematically for disinformation and information manipulation in connection with the war against Ukraine. Britain’s Ofcom revoked RT’s UK licence the same month, concluding that TV-Novosti was not “fit and proper” to hold a broadcast licence in light of Russia’s actions and RT’s record on due impartiality.
These steps were not isolated. The G7’s Rapid Response Mechanism reported earlier this year that Russia has been funding and directing covert influence operations using state entities, including RT, to undermine elected governments and distract from its war in Ukraine. Studies by NATO and allied institutions have documented sustained Russian information campaigns around Ukraine since 2014, encompassing television, online platforms and social media to shape narratives, sow doubt and erode trust in independent reporting.
Against that backdrop, RT India represents more than another foreign channel on New Delhi’s crowded airwaves. Unlike earlier RT ventures that relied on carriage deals in relatively arm’s-length regulatory environments, this operation is anchored in a formal partnership with India’s national public broadcaster and backed by multiple MoUs with major Russian media conglomerates. The potential exists for Russian-produced content to circulate not only via RT India’s own feeds but through co-productions, exchange arrangements and downstream carriage on Prasar Bharati platforms.
For India, which has sought to project “strategic autonomy” and to resist taking sides publicly over Ukraine, the collaboration sits uneasily alongside democratic partners’ moves to restrict the same outlets. India is under no obligation to follow EU or UK decisions, and New Delhi has repeatedly defended its right to choose its partners. Yet the contrast is stark: RT has been barred from broadcasting to European audiences on grounds of disinformation, while being welcomed into one of the world’s largest media markets with privileged access to a public broadcaster.
The strategic implications reach beyond India’s borders. Indian television content, especially in English and Hindi, is widely consumed across the subcontinent and in the diaspora. RT India’s English-language output, framed as reflecting Indian and Russian perspectives, is likely to be distributed digitally across South Asia, where regulatory oversight of cross-border content is uneven and where Russian narratives on issues such as sanctions, energy, defence cooperation and the war in Ukraine already find receptive audiences.
Russia has demonstrated in regions from Europe to Latin America that it is prepared to use state media and affiliated outlets to advance foreign policy objectives, influence electoral debates and exploit domestic grievances. In South Asia, potential points of leverage include long-standing defence ties with India, energy cooperation, and sensitivities around Western criticism of human rights and democratic standards. A well-resourced RT operation, backed by content-sharing agreements, offers Moscow an additional channel to promote narratives favourable to its position and to contest Western messaging on everything from Ukraine to technology standards.
For India, the question is less whether to engage with Russian media than how to manage the relationship. Existing Indian rules on foreign ownership and news content may limit direct control, but the partnership with Prasar Bharati gives Russian producers a measure of institutional legitimacy. That raises issues of transparency around funding, editorial control and the labelling of state-backed content, particularly where co-productions or shared footage are involved.
The launch of RT India therefore opens a new phase in the information contest over the subcontinent. It offers New Delhi an additional outlet to project its own narratives into Eurasian and Global South debates via Russian platforms. It also creates fresh avenues for a foreign power, whose broadcasters have been restricted in Europe for disinformation, to shape how tens of millions of South Asians understand the war in Ukraine, Western policy and the broader international order. How Indian regulators, media professionals and audiences respond will determine whether RT India becomes simply another international news brand in a crowded market, or a significant vector of Russian influence in one of the world’s most contested information spaces.
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