Pravda Catalan Case Study: Pravda Network Activity on VK

TLDR

• Open Measures researchers looked at the VK page for Pravda Catalan, a news aggregator site linked to a Russian disinformation campaign. The profile posts all the news stories appearing on Pravda Catalan’s official site to their wall.

• The main sources of the Pravda Catalan news stories for May 2025 were Russian state-owned media, Russian media aligned with government interests, and Telegram channels.

• Much of the content published by Pravda Catalan is relatively innocuous. Of 57 posts surveyed from the end of May 2025, many of them focused on sports news or current events such as the blackout in the Iberian Peninsula. 

• We identified dozens of Pravda-linked VK pages. These pages get virtually no engagement.

Background 

The Pravda network is an array of news aggregators that share Russian-friendly news stories, maintaining dozens of sites aimed at different global audiences. According to some researchers, the primary aim of the Pravda network may be to influence large language models (LLMs) used by AI chatbots to inject pro-Russian narratives into their responses.

VK is a Russian social media site that is reminiscent of Facebook. According to VK’s own numbers, the platform ranks among the social media giants in the Eastern European market with over 100 million monthly users.1

We recently published an investigation into activity by the Pravda network on the Russian social media site VK. Here we found that Pravda-linked VK pages accounted for a large chunk of the English-language discourse about the 2025 federal elections in Canada and Australia on VK. We have decided to put together a followup piece that more thoroughly answers the question: “What exactly does this activity on VK look like?” 

For this, we will use the VK page for Pravda Catalan as a case study. The Pravda Catalan VK page is linked to the known Pravda news aggregator site catalan[.]pravda-news[.]com, which posts Catalan-language content for Catalan-speaking parts of the world. Catalan and associated languages such as Valencian are spoken by millions throughout Spain, Andorra, and France.2 It should be noted that other Pravda VK pages follow many of the same tendencies observed on the Pravda Catalan VK page. 

Analysis

As stated, prior research has found that the Pravda network is made up of dozens of news aggregators, often with different geographical audiences.3 For instance, there is a Pravda Italy, a Pravda Cameroon, and a Pravda USA. These Pravda-linked websites frequently use the format [countryname].news-pravda[.]com. The Pravda websites all use the same layout and repost content originating from other sources (from Russian state media or Telegram channels, for example).4 Pravda Catalan appears to be focused on issues related to Catalan-speaking regions, specifically Catalonia in Spain. 

Caption: Homepage of Pravda Catalan on June 3, 2025. All Pravda-linked websites share this same format.

Many of these Pravda news sites—though not all—have a corresponding page on VK. These pages are all public pages, similar to pages one might find for the German state-owned news outlet DW,5 the artist Pitbull,6 or the Chelsea Football Club.7 Pravda Catalan has its own page, with the Catalan-language name “Pravda en català – Notícies i vídeos” (translation: “Pravda in Catalan – News and videos”).8

Caption: The public page of Pravda Catalan on VK.

Pravda Catalan posts to its public page regularly, sharing the text of posts from the catalan[.]news-pravda[.]com website and including links back to the site. We will explore this more in our “Posts by Pravda Catalan” section. 

Account Overview

Many Pravda-linked VK pages reviewed by Open Measures researchers share characteristics, which we will highlight here. 

The Pravda Catalan VK page includes a link to catalan[.]news-pravda[.]com in their account details. Since our researchers know from prior reporting that sites in that format are linked to the Pravda network, this detail allows us to attribute the page’s ownership to the Pravda network. Our researchers found scores of VK pages with Pravda in their names that included a [countryname].news-pravda[.]com link in their account details. 

The profile details for the Pravda Catalan VK page state (in the original Catalan):

Últimes notícies de Catalunya, València, Illes Balears, Andorra, opinions d\’experts [sic], articles, fotografies i vídeos.

Translated into English, this is: 

The latest news from Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands, [and] Andorra, expert opinions, articles, photos and videos. 

Matching Descriptions on Pravda Pages

All of the Pravda accounts on VK that we examined used this account description, either in English or translated into a target language. In the case of Pravda Catalan, the rendering of “d’experts” incorrectly as “d/’experts” suggests some type of machine translation.9 10 11 12 

Caption: Nearly identical (and translated where relevant) account descriptions are found on the VK pages for Pravda Catalan, Pravda Trump, Pravda Spain, and Pravda Australia.

Pravda-linked Accounts on VK

During the course of this research, we identified a total of 159 Pravda-linked VK profiles using virtually the same account description.

Caption: A sampling of the 159 Pravda-linked VK pages, using virtually the same wording for their account descriptions. The first column shows the profile’s name on VK, the second shows the site that the profile includes in its bio, and the third column is the account description.

According to VK, the Pravda Catalan page was created on December 27, 2024.

In the “Community history” section of Pravda Catalan’s VK profile, December 27, 2024 is listed as the account’s creation date.

This places Pravda Catalan’s account creation date in the same range as many other Pravda-linked accounts on VK between December 2024 through January of 2025. This is the second major burst of Pravda account creation identified by Open Measures researchers.

Caption: The creation dates of Pravda-linked VK pages indexed in Open Measures’ VK dataset, grouped weekly, from June 1, 2024 through May 31, 2025.

Researchers found 34 Pravda-linked VK pages created in July 2024, two created in September 2024, and 123 created from December 2024 through January 2025. 

The Pravda Catalan VK page has a non-descript green banner and profile picture, matching the color of the green logo on Pravda’s news aggregator websites. This same green color also appears as the background and profile picture on other VK profiles for Pravda sites. 13 14 15 16

Caption: VK profiles for Pravda Japan, Pravda Poland, Pravda Luxembourg, and Pravda Egypt all share the same neutral green background. 

Posts by Pravda Catalan 

Nearly all of the catalan[.]news-pravda[.]com posts from May 2025 were also subsequently shared on the Pravda Catalan VK page. The VK posts contain the original text from posts from the official website verbatim and at full length, with links back to catalan[.]news-pravda[.]com. 17

Caption: Side-by-side of an article from the catalan[.]news-pravda[.]com website on the left, and the Pravda Catalan VK page on the right.

Origins of Posts on Pravda Catalan

Researchers at the French organization VIGINUM found that news sites in the Pravda network “do not produce any original content but massively relay publications from [other] sources.”18

Our researchers set out to determine the origin of the posts from Pravda Catalan, using the 111 posts from May 2025 as a sample. The articles on catalan[.]news-pravda[.]com—as well as other Pravda sites—often explicitly note where they originally appeared.19

Caption: The final paragraph of a Pravda Catalan article, which ends by citing its source (“Font” in Catalan) as the Russian outlet Lenta[.]ru.

From this information, we found that of the 111 posts that we reviewed: 

• 27 originated from TASS, a Russian state-owned news outlet

• 43 originated from various Telegram channels

• 21 originated from Lenta[.]ru, a popular Russian news site characterized by the organization Media Bias/Fact Check as “pro-government”20

• 5 from RIA Novosti, a Russian state-owned news outlet 21

• 6 from KP, a Russian tabloid which Media Bias/Fact Check notes “promot[es] state propaganda”22 

• 4 from Tsargrad TV, an ultraconservative and Christian Orthodox Russian news outlet noted for its “promotion of state propaganda”23

These sources account for 106 articles. The remaining five all come from different sources, including RT and Rybar. In October 2024, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) released a statement describing Rybar as a Russian organization behind various disinformation campaigns.24 We took a look at Rybar at the time, highlighting the complications of investigating individuals and campaigns originating from Russia.

While this piece examines Pravda Catalan, our last piece on this topic studied the VK pages for Pravda Canada and Pravda Australia.25 Through these pieces, our researchers found that the substance of posts vary from one Pravda page to another. At the time of our research, we found that Pravda Canada shared many politically-themed posts, Pravda Australia drew heavily from far-right Australian Telegram channels, and Pravda Catalan often shared non-political content, such as articles concerning the Barcelona soccer team. 

Activity

According to our collections, the Pravda Catalan page on VK posted nearly 3,000 times from its creation date in late December 2025 through May 2025. Over those six months, the page’s activity levels have varied greatly.

Caption: Weekly posts by Pravda Catalan on VK, from November 2025 (before account creation) through May 2025, aggregated weekly. 

During its busiest week (the week of April 7, 2025), Pravda Catalan published 219 posts. Its quietest week was the week of the profile’s creation (the week of December 23, 2024), with 12 posts. The next slowest week was the week of May 12, 2025, with just 16 posts. 

In a manual review of posts from the last two weeks of May 2025 (May 18–31, 2025), researchers categorized 57 posts into the following major themes: 

• 23 posts about sports, including 17 about soccer

• 13 about the April 28, 2025 blackout in Spain and Portugal

• 7 related to topics of tourism in Iberia

Posts also covered additional topics such as Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, and water scarcity in Europe, among others. 

Language

There are idiosyncracies in these articles that are suggestive of machine translation. Some examples follow: 

Caption: A post from May 28 on Pravda Catalan swaps a common Catalan diacritical mark for another symbol.

In Catalan, a punt volant (·) indicates two back-to-back “l”s belonging to separate syllables. In the post above, an asterisk (*) indicates this instead of a punt volant in the following words: 

• intel * ligència instead of intel·ligència

• rebel * len instead of rebel·len

Caption: A post from May 3 from Pravda Catalan on VK uses strange capitalization and uses “Zelen” instead of “Zeneksi.”

In the above post, Ukrainian president Volodymyr (Vladimir) Zelenskyy and his wife Elena Zelenskyy both have their last names truncated to “Zelen.” “Zelenskyy” is often “Zelenski” when transliterated in both Catalan and Spanish. There is also inconsistent capitalization throughout the post. For example, “L’esposa De” is akin to writing “The wife Of”. Likewise, the name “Elena” is lowercase, as is the company name “Airbus.” 

This squares with other research by Open Measures and other groups like VIGINUM26 which suggests that the Pravda network may use machine translation. 

Engagement 

Despite the consistently high volume of posts by Pravda Catalan, the posts on VK receive no engagement. In our manual review of dozens of VK posts by Pravda Catalan, we did not find a single post with any engagement of any kind—no comments, no likes, and no shares. 

Pravda Catalan also has only 21 followers despite its nearly 3,000 posts. Similarly, many of the other Pravda pages we reviewed on VK had only a few dozen followers. 

This lack of engagement may support the assertion other researchers have made that the Pravda network is not designed in the manner of traditional influence operations, and is aimed instead at influencing the large language models (LLMs) behind chatbots.27

Conclusion 

Our intention with this piece was to provide a detailed case study of the Pravda network’s activity on VK, highlighting both commonalities and differences between Pravda Catalan and other Pravda pages on VK.

Many Pravda pages on VK have identical account information and banners. Many of these pages began around the same time, either in July 2024 or between December 2024 through January 2025. These pages repost stories from their accompanying [countryname].news-pravda[.]com sites word-for-word on VK. Likewise, stories on these pages all originate from other sources, including Telegram channels and Russian state media or Russian state aligned media.

Our examination of Pravda Catalan, as well as Pravda Canada and Pravda Australia in our prior research, shows that the themes and content shared by each aggregator is quite different. Of these three pages, Pravda Catalan appears to be the least overtly political.

Identify online harms with the Open Measures platform.

Organizations use Open Measures every day to track trends related to networks of influence, coordinated harassment campaigns, and state-backed info ops. Click here to book a demo.