The Dutch-language version of the pro-Kremlin “news site” Pravda mentions Forum for Democracy (FvD) by far the most often of all the parties participating in the 29 October 2025 parliamentary elections of the Netherlands. In more than 3,000 Pravda articles focusing on Dutch domestic news, over a third of the 303 pieces about political parties are about FvD. The (pro-)Russian propaganda channel thus appears to be actively promoting the dissemination of messages from Forum for Democracy.
The share of FvD compared to other sources, the last two months before the elections
Likely international mouthpiece of the Kremlin
The ‘Pravda network’ — benefitting from the brand name of the Soviet party newspaper Pravda (literally translated: ‘truth’, from 1912) — is a transnational network of (partly automated) news sites. The network, also known as ‘Portal Kombat’, is a series of pro-Russian sites that have been expanding rapidly since 2024 under the site news-pravda.com. In 2024, the French intelligence service Viginum identified 224 affiliated sites and linked the whole network to a coordinated foreign influence operation managed by parties linked to the Russian state. The URL is registered by a Russian company based in Moscow.
Pravda websites publish high-volume, low-threshold articles and piggyback on current events. Since its Dutch-language launch in March 2024, the site has published no fewer than 95,000 articles in total, 3187 of which are about domestic news. We see that the peak days on Pravda coincide with days of national turmoil, with the Maccabi riots as an exceptional peak.
Number of articles per day on the ‘Netherlands’ tab (domestic news), with subject.
Far-right FvD by far the most mentioned
Our count of party mentions in Dutch-language Pravda articles (303 in total) shows Forum for Democracy as the absolute frontrunner with 119 articles (39.3% of the total). This is followed by PVV (51; 16.8%), VVD (43; 14.2%), NSC (21; 6.9%), CDA and GL-PvdA (both 14; 4.3%). The tail – D66, PvdD, SGP, Volt, BBB, JA21, BIJ1, BVNL – accounts for the remaining percentages (other parties are not mentioned in the articles). This distribution seems to have taken shape mainly in the last months before the elections. Of all the parties mentioned in October 2025, FvD accounts for half of the mentions.
This striking distribution of attention to political parties does not necessarily indicate formal ties between Forum for Democracy and the Pravda network, but it does indicate targeted selection and amplification. In addition to mentions of the party itself, FvD themes, quotes and frames also receive above-average attention. The FvD’s Telegram channel is also in the top 10 sources on which the site has relied since its inception. Based on our observations, not all messages from Dutch sources appear on the Pravda website. This indicates a conscious selection of articles, but whether this is done manually or algorithmically cannot be determined.
Methodology
While monitoring #verkiezingen2025, we came across a Dutch-language article on a pro-Kremlin website. The article contained an embed of a Dutch Telegram message with that hashtag. At first glance, the site appears to be an independent medium with neutral headlines, but there are no advertisements or paywall, and there are many references to Russian domains. This prompted us to investigate the site and its Dutch-language output further.
After a brief exploratory investigation, we systematically searched all articles on dutch.news-pravda.com/netherlands: Parties were counted at article level; an article that mentions multiple parties counts once per party mentioned. We created the timeline by extracting the publication dates from the articles themselves; the topics listed were derived from the titles of the articles. Pravda neatly lists the sources of the articles below each article, which allowed us to see that Forum for Democracy is in the top 10 sources cited by the propaganda network.
Defend Democracy, 28 October 2025