Part of its content is also questioning the impact of international sanctions. For example, Jostová ironically says that “sanctions in Russia? This market in Kazan has obviously never heard of them”, thus trying to create the impression that economic restrictions have no real impact on everyday life in the country. It should be added that Kazan is a relatively developed city with well-stocked markets, so showing it as a representative example of life in the whole country is misleading.
He also reacts similarly to criticism of the standard of living outside of Moscow, when he publishes a comment intended for a foreign audience: “For all those who tell me that everything a hundred kilometers from Moscow is ugly and dilapidated”. While Jostová presents the Russian countryside as functional and tidy, it looks different.
He also celebrates Putin’s birthday
Her posts go beyond the scope of lifestyle content and enter the openly political plane. Jostová repeatedly spreads narratives consistent with the Kremlin’s official line, for example calling Kharkiv a “Russian city”. In another case, he presents the story of a Ukrainian woman who moved to Russia as evidence of alleged persecution by Ukrainian authorities.
In one of his statements, he even said: “It was not Russia that said we should fight to the last Ukrainian. It was not Russia that demanded the erasure of language, culture and religion. Russia has always considered Ukrainians as its brothers and sisters”, thereby trying to show the viewer an image of a country that acts as a defender of “traditional values” and peaceful relations.
The blogger actively engages in open political communication: she celebrates the Russian president’s birthday, responds to Ukrainian posts with threats, and often blames the war on the West.
According to research by the independent OSINT together with UNITED24 Media, Jostova, along with her husband, Mexican businessman Domingo Garcia, is at the center of the growth of a network of foreign bloggers promoting life in Russia.
Even subtle propaganda is propaganda
This network is funded and supported by a Russian PR agency (Unlimited), which actively organizes content spreading pro-Russian narratives among foreign audiences. The Jost case shows how personal stories and the “foreigner’s perspective” are used to spread propaganda more subtly but very effectively.
Under the guise of lifestyle and travel, an image of Russia is created before the eyes of the international audience as a country of peaceful life, while war and occupation are downplayed or completely hushed up.
A similar model of spreading pro-Russian narratives has been used for a long time by , a Russian citizen originally from Germany, who mainly targets a German-speaking audience. She came to Crimea in 2016 under the pretext of a research project. However, it gradually turned into a platform spreading pro-Russian content.
In her videos, she compared life on the peninsula before and after the Russian occupation – always in favor of the latter version. Since then, he regularly travels through the occupied territories and spreads pro-Russian narratives through reports and documents.
In 2019, the YouTube channel Glücklich auf der Krim (“Happy in Crimea”), focused on life in the Crimean peninsula after its illegal annexation by Russia. She later produced several documentaries, including Auf der Suche nach der Wahrheit (“The Search for Truth”) and Donbass: Der Ursprung des Konflikts (“Donbas: The Origin of the Conflict”), in which she presents the Russian-Ukrainian war as a consequence of Ukraine’s alleged attacks on its own population and legitimizes Russian interventions.
Screenings were canceled due to protests
One of her films, Donbas 2022, was subsequently also spread through the propaganda network InfoDefence, which distributed its translations on Telegram in several European languages. Attempts to publicly screen some of her documentaries in Germany sparked protests and led to their cancellation.
The film contains footage of destroyed hospitals, apartment buildings and infrastructure, which Lippová attributes to the Ukrainian army in her narrative. Through visual content and commentary, it presents the situation in Donbass as a result of Ukraine’s alleged attack on civilians, while minimizing or completely omitting the operation of Russian troops and their impact on the civilian population.
The aim of the film is to create the impression that Russia’s military presence in the region is legitimate and defensive, and that the conflict arises mainly from “Ukraine’s aggression”, thereby reinforcing pro-Russian narratives. At the same time, Lippová uses dramatic shots of destroyed buildings and explosions in the film to increase the emotional effect and support the image of Donbass as an area suffering from the influence of “Western interventions” and “Ukrainian aggression”.
Since 2021, he has been running the Telegram channel Neues aus Russland, where he publishes content in German and Russian and which is followed by more than 170,000 users. Her posts also appear on the website of the same name and on the Russian social network VKontakte, which ensures their stable and long-term reach.
On social networks, Lippová presents herself as a war reporter and interprets events in Ukraine exclusively from a pro-Russian perspective. In addition to his own channels, he regularly appears in alternative and far-right media, where he spreads narratives in line with the official Kremlin line, including openly pro-Russian and pro-Putin messages.
Who is behind it
Behind these foreign bloggers stands , which combines professional PR, state-supported propaganda and sophisticated media techniques. The key figure is 30-year-old Maria Dudková, who runs the Bezgranichnye PR company. Dudková oversees dozens of foreign bloggers, including Jostová, while ensuring filming, promotion on social networks and compliance with Kremlin narratives. She herself is almost invisible online, but her influence on the content that spreads abroad is fundamental.
Producers and bloggers seek fame, Dudková controls content and funding through the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives (PFKI). It thus ensures that news stays in line with the Kremlin’s official line. For the Western audience, these channels seem like innocent travel vlogs, but for the Kremlin, they are a sophisticated form of foreign influence campaigns.
Although the Russian Road channel does not have many followers, its content is professionally produced. An investigation by the Organized Crime and Anti-Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) revealed that several RT employees were directly involved in the production of the videos. Among them are Artem Vorobej and Pavel Baidikov, both experienced RT producers, which explains the high quality and systematic content.
At the same time, the channel deliberately glosses over the harsher reality of life for foreigners in Russia: a new Kremlin decree forces foreign men to either join the army or lose legal residency in the country. Russian Road is not just a series of travel videos, but part of a coordinated propaganda strategy that combines media professionalism with the hard power of the state – soft power, which is also hard control.
