Sputnik has claimed that the sinking of Argentine submarine ARA San Juan was caused by a British deep-sea mine deployed during the Falklands War. The problem? Britain didn’t lay any mines.

Sputnik News is a successor to Russian state-owned RIA Novosti’s international branch which became defunct in 2013. The agency is wholly owned and operated by the Russian Government.

The article, which can be found here, suggests that the explosive event registered in the area of ​​operations of the Argentine submarine ARA San Juan was caused by a deep-sea mine “installed at the time of the Falklands War in 1982.”

Quoting Russian naval captain Vasili Dandikin on the fate of the ARA San Juan:

“In 1982, the British submarines could have placed maritime mines near the Argentine coasts, the mine could remain in the bottom for 35 years, and once a storm disconnected it from the rope, it could have hit the San Juan.” The thing is, the UK didn’t use any naval mines during the Falklands War. A report in The New York Times addressed Sputnik and RT as “powerful information weapons”. Foreign Policy magazine has described Sputnik as a slick and internet-savvy outlet of Kremlin propaganda, which “remixes President Vladimir Putin’s brand of revanchist nationalism for an international audience… beating a predictable drum of anti-Western rhetoric”.

Russia is at the forefront of information warfare in the modern age, utilising an array of organisations and strategies to spread disinformation to further national strategy but how are they doing it? We discuss that here.