Case Study: Pravda Catalan and Pravda Network Activity on VK
A deep dive into the VK page of Pravda Catalan, a Catalan-language news aggregator
TLDR
Open Measures researchers looked at the VK page for Pravda Catalan, a news aggregator site linked to Pravda Network, associated with Russian disinformation campaigns.
All the news stories from Pravda Catalan’s official site were cross-posted on Pravda Catalan’s VK page. 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, all of which 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 the large language models (LLMs) and AI chatbots by exposing them to high volumes of pro-Russian narratives.
VK is a Russian social media site 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. In this followup piece and case study, we will use the VK page for Pravda Catalan to thoroughly answer the question: “What exactly does this activity on VK look like?”
The Pravda Catalan VK page is linked to the known Pravda news aggregator site [catalan[dot]pravda-news[dot]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[dot]news-pravda[dot]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.
Many – though not all – of these Pravda news sites have a corresponding page on VK. These pages are all public pages (similar, for example, to pages one might find for the German state-owned news outlet DW,5 the artist Pitbull,6 or the Chelsea Football Club7).
Pravda Catalan has its own page, with the Catalan-language name “Pravda en català - Notícies i vídeos” (translation: “Pravda in Catalan - News and videos”).
Pravda Catalan posts to its public page regularly, sharing the text of posts from the [catalan[dot]news-pravda[dot]com] website and including links back to the site. We will explore this more in the “Posts by Pravda Catalan” section below.
Account Overview
Many of the Pravda-linked VK pages our researchers reviewed have common characteristics. For example, the Pravda Catalan VK page includes a link to [catalan[dot]news-pravda[dot]com] in its account details.
From prior reporting, our researchers found scores of other VK pages with Pravda in their names that included a [countryname[dot]news-pravda[dot]com] link in their account details. Since this same format was found in so many other pages linked to the Pravda network, this detail allows us to attribute ownership of Pravda Catalan’s VK page to the network as well.
Matching Descriptions on Pravda Pages
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.
All of the other Pravda accounts on VK we examined (Pravda Trump,8 Pravda Spain,9 Pravda Australia,10 Pravda Japan,11 Pravda Poland,12 Pravda Luxembourg,13 Pravda Egypt,14 etc.) used this account description as well, 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.
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.
According to VK, the Pravda Catalan page was created on Dec. 27, 2024.
This places Pravda Catalan’s account creation date in the same range as many other Pravda-linked accounts on VK, between Dec. 2024 through Jan. 2025. This is the second major burst of Pravda account creation identified by Open Measures researchers.
Researchers found 34 Pravda-linked VK pages created in July 2024, two created in Sept. 2024, and 123 created from Dec. 2024 through Jan. 2025.
The Pravda Catalan VK page has a nondescript 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.
Posts by Pravda Catalan
Nearly all of the [catalan[dot]news-pravda[dot]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[dot]news-pravda[dot]com].15
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.”16
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[dot]news-pravda[dot]com] – as well as other Pravda sites – often explicitly note where they originally appeared.17
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[dot]ru, a popular Russian news site characterized by the organization Media Bias/Fact Check as “pro-government”
5 from RIA Novosti, a Russian state-owned news outlet
6 from KP, a Russian tabloid which Media Bias/Fact Check notes “promot[es] state propaganda”
4 from Tsargrad TV, an ultraconservative and Christian Orthodox Russian news outlet noted for its “promotion of state propaganda”
These sources account for 106 articles. The remaining five all come from different sources, including RT and Rybar. In Oct. 2024, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) released a statement describing Rybar as a Russian organization behind various disinformation campaigns. 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.
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 Dec. 2025 through May 2025. Over those six months, the page’s activity levels varied greatly.
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 Dec. 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 idiosyncrasies in these articles that are suggestive of machine translation (with examples included below).
In Catalan, a punt volant (·) indicates two back-to-back “i”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”
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” (transliterated while preserving the error in capitalization). Likewise, the name “Elena” is lowercase, as is the company name “Airbus.”
This squares with our past research about Pravda network as well as the research of other groups like VIGINUM previously mentioned, all of which suggests that 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 like traditional influence operations and is aimed instead at influencing the large language models (LLMs) behind chatbots.18
Conclusion
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 Dec. 2024 through Jan. 2025. These pages repost stories from their accompanying [countryname[dot]news-pravda[dot]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.
Our intention with this piece is 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, in the interest of providing a more detailed methodology to aid other researchers studying misinformation campaigns.
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Châtelet, V., & Lesplingart, A. (2025, February 24). Russia’s so-called “Pravda” network expands worldwide. DFRLab. Here.
PORTAL KOMBAT: A structured and coordinated pro-Russian propaganda network. (2024, February). Secrétariat général de la défense et de la sécurité nationale. Here.
Pravda Trump. (n.d.). Pravda Trump - Trump news [VK profile]. VK.
Pravda Spain. (n.d.). Pravda España - Noticias de España [VK profile]. VK.
Pravda Australia. (n.d.). Pravda Australia - Australia news [VK profile]. VK.
Pravda Japan. (n.d.). Pravda Japan - Japan News [VK profile]. VK.
Pravda Poland. (n.d.). Pravda Poland - Poland News [VK profile]. VK.
Pravda Luxembourg. (n.d.). Pravda Luxembourg - Luxembourg news [VK profile]. VK.
Pravda Egypt. (n.d.). Pravda Egypt - Egypt news [VK profile]. VK.
Semin va dir a qui donarà suport a la final de La Lliga de Campions. (2025, May 29). Pravda Catalan. Here.
PORTAL KOMBAT: A structured and coordinated pro-Russian propaganda network. (2024, February). Secrétariat général de la défense et de la sécurité nationale. Here.