Yandex's Top-5 News as a Tool of Russia's Propaganda Abroad: A Case Study of Belarus

https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612251349018 The International Journal of Press/Politics 1 –24 © The Author(s) 2025 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/19401612251349018 journals.sagepub.com/home/hij Article Yandex’s Top-5 News as a Tool of Russia’s Propaganda Abroad: A Case Study of Belarus Daria Kravets1 Abstract Prior research has demonstrated that the algorithms of the Kremlin-controlled search engine Yandex are biased toward the interests of Russia’s ruling elites. However, it has focused primarily on Yandex’s web and news search algorithms and largely neglected Yandex’s popular top-5 news recommender algorithm. Therefore, this study investigates the role of news embedded on Yandex’s homepage—on the side to its search functionality—in disseminating Russia’s propaganda to foreign audiences and tracks its evolution over time. To do so, I audited Yandex’s top-5 news algorithm in Belarus from 2010 to 2022. By analyzing 474,663 news headlines from Yandex’s homepage (yandex.by) in Belarus, I found that (1) on a monthly average, the majority (52.2%) of Yandex’s top-5 news in Belarus came from sources with explicit connections to Russia’s ruling elites, and (2) a substantial portion of the news was political, with the share of political news increasing over time. In addition, Yandex in Belarus (3) frequently featured news about Russia or Russian actors, which appeared almost exclusively in the default domestic top news section for Belarus as opposed to the top news happening in the world, and (4) experienced a notable decline in the presence of Kremlin-critical news sources, marked by the complete disappearance of Western and Russian opposition websites in late 2018–2019 and the disappearance of Belarusian opposition websites shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These findings demonstrate the gradual political appropriation of Yandex’s top-5 news algorithms by Russia’s ruling elites, marking Yandex as a propaganda tool of the Kremlin. 1Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt), Munich, Germany Corresponding Author: Daria Kravets, Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation (bidt), Gabelsbergerstr. 4, Munich 80333, Germany. Email: [email protected] 1349018HIJXXX10.1177/19401612251349018The International Journal of Press/PoliticsKravets research-article2025 2 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) Keywords Yandex, propaganda, foreign influence, algorithmic audit, Russia, web archive, authoritarian platforms, incidential news exposure, propaganda tools, Belarus While previous research has numerously accused Yandex’s algorithms of bias toward the interests of Russia’s ruling elites (Kovalev 2021; Kravets and Toepfl 2021; Kravets et al. 2023; Makhortykh et al. 2022; Wijermars 2021), it has focused primarily on Yandex’s web and news search algorithms and largely neglected Yandex’s popular top-5 news recommender algorithm (for an exception, see Daucé and Loveluck 2021). According to Yandex, the top news selection embedded on Yandex’s homepage (see Figure 1) is generated automatically without human intervention by gathering news from partner sources and clustering them based on citation rate, recency, and informativity.1 Until its abolishment in September 2022, the top-5 news were one of the company’s most prominent trademarks and one of its core services after search, which, according to official Yandex usage statistics, reached about 152 million daily visits in Russia alone.2 These top-5 news headlines could thus significantly shape the country’s news agenda and drive considerable traffic toward the featured news websites, urging news editors to actively tailor their content to appear in Yandex’s top news (Kovalev 2021). Hereby making Yandex an important information gatekeeper directing and controlling the visibility, dissemination, and access to news for a significant segment of the Russian-speaking audience (Wijermars 2021). Moreover, previous audits of Yandex’s algorithms have been relatively shortterm, ranging from 1 day (Makhortykh et al. 2020; Urman et al. 2021), to several months (Kravets et al. 2023), and up to a year (Kravets and Toepfl 2021). However, as Jowett and O’Donnell (2012) emphasize, research on propaganda requires a systematic and longitudinal analysis of news content. Thus, to systematically gauge the progression of the political appropriation of Yandex’s algorithms by Russia’s ruling elites, commonly referred to as “the Kremlin,” claimed in the literature (see Daucé 2017), long-term research trajectories are necessary. In this regard, this study offers one of the most extensive longitudinal audits of a Yandex’s algorithms to date, covering a span of 12 years (for other longitudinal search engine audits beyond Yandex, see Metaxa et al. 2019; Ulloa et al. 2024). Additionally, previous research has primarily audited Yandex’s algorithms solely within Russia (e.g., Daucé and Loveluck 2021; Kravets and Toepfl 2021; Makhortykh et al. 2022). In contrast, responding to Erbsen and Põldre’s (2022) appeal to look into Yandex’s role as a potential “information tool of the Kremlin” (p. 24) in contexts outside of Russia, this study examines the role of Yandex’s algorithms as a resource for Russia’s propaganda abroad (for an exception, consider Kravets et al. 2023). Additionally, none of the above research has explored how authoritarian regimes utilize news delivery via state-controlled Internet service platforms—including search engines, email services, and social networks—as a means of disseminating propaganda. While these platforms primarily attract users for their various services, they Kravets 3 also expose users to news on the side. In Russia, for example, popular state-controlled platforms such as the email service mail.ru and the search engine Rambler, akin to Yandex, integrate news into their services. In China, the most popular search engine, Baidu, similarly to Yandex, displays top-5 news next to its search bar.3 This study argues that the embedding of news content within these platforms is a deliberate strategy by authoritarian regimes to disseminate state propaganda. By making news ubiquitous on platforms frequented for nonnews purposes, these regimes ensure that their narratives reach a broad audience, including those typically disengaged from politics or news-avoidant. This strategic placement of content is designed to induce incidental news exposure (e.g., Strauß et al. 2020), allowing for the subtle but pervasive influence of state messages, highlighting a sophisticated method of shaping public opinion under authoritarian rule. To address the gaps defined above, this study conducts a systematic longitudinal audit of Yandex’s top-5 news algorithm in Belarus from 2010 until 2022. Belarus is a post-Soviet state that has maintained close political, economic, and cultural ties with Russia since gaining independence in 1991. Although formally sovereign, Belarus and Russia signed a union agreement in 1999 aimed at forming a loose confederation—an arrangement that remained largely symbolic for many years. However, in the wake of the mass opposition protests in Belarus in 2020, Russian influence has deepened significantly. Throughout this period, Russia has consistently supported the autocratic leadership of Alyaksandr Lukashenka, viewing Belarus as a strategically important client state on its western flank. I chose Belarus as a country case for this audit because, at the time of research, it was one of the key targets of Russia’s foreign communication efforts (Kravets et al. 2023) and the country where Yandex held its highest search market share outside of Russia. Yandex launched its Belarussian version on April 14, 2010,4 and from 2010 to 2022, its search market share in Belarus ranged between a peak of 38 percent in July 2011 and a low of 16 percent in July 2022.5 To illustrate Yandex’s reach: in September 2022, the platform recorded around 120 million visits from approximately 7.5 million unique users in Belarus6—a substantial figure in a Figure 1. Screenshot of yandex.by in January 2020. 4 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) country with a total population of roughly 9 million. Beyond these figures, the case of Belarus is particularly interesting due to the close political ties between Belarusian and Russian ruling elites (Navumau 2020), Belarus’s alliance with Russia in the ongoing war in Ukraine, and the Kremlin’s long-standing efforts to expand its influence over the Belarusian media landscape (Szostek 2015). The remainder of the article is structured as follows: First, I provide an overview of Russia’s foreign propaganda efforts and their primary tools. This is followed by a review of prior research on search engines in authoritarian contexts and previous studies on Yandex, including its history of political appropriation by the Kremlin. I then present the case of Yandex in Belarus, including Russia’s influence on the Belarusian media landscape. After outlining the research questions, I explain the methods and data used in the study, followed by the presentation and discussion of the results. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of Yandex as a tool of Russia’s foreign informational influence, as well as to the broader literature on state-controlled algorithmic gatekeepers in authoritarian contexts and their appropriation by the state. Russia’s Tools of Foreign Propaganda Jowett and O’Donnell’s (2012: 7) define propaganda as the deliberate and systematic attempts to shape public perceptions to further the propagandist’s intentions. The strategic significance of manipulating foreign agendas and audiences became apparent to contemporary Russia’s ruling elites in the wake of the Color Revolutions (Feklyunina 2016). These transformative uprisings that occurred in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan in 2004–2005, prompted a strategic reassessment of Russia’s international information policies. In the years that followed, the Kremlin invested substantial resources into foreign propaganda initiatives, laying the foundation for the extensive foreign communication apparatus it operates today (Feklyunina 2016; Hutchings and Szostek 2015; Zhang and Zhou 2023). Building on this foundation, Russia has in the past decade deployed a diverse set of “propaganda tools” (Jowett & O’Donnell 2012: 164) to influence foreign publics. These include state-sponsored international broadcasters such as RT and Sputnik (Glazunova et al. 2023; Kragh and Åsberg 2017; Wagnsson 2022; Yablokov 2015), as well as trolls, bots, and social media platforms such as Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki (Golova 2020; Kling 2022). However, the role of Yandex—a prominent Russian statecontrolled search and technology company—in the dissemination of Kremlin propaganda abroad has received limited scholarly attention so far. This is despite the fact that Yandex maintains a significant search market share in several countries in Russia’s immediate neighborhood besides Belarus: Uzbekistan (16% as of December 2022), Tajikistan (15%), Turkmenistan (15%), Kazakhstan (16%), Kyrgyzstan (11%), and Ukraine (9%).7 Kravets 5 Search Engines as Propaganda Tools Prior research on search engines in authoritarian contexts (e.g., in China and Russia) has demonstrated how search engines in such contexts may be susceptible to political filtering and censorship. For instance, Jiang (2014) found that in China, the search results of the state-owned Chinese search engine Baidu overlapped only by approximately 6.8 percent with that of Google, “implying different search engines, different results and different social realities” (p. 229). Moreover, Paltemaa et al. (2020) compared three thousand google.com and baidu.com image search results for potentially sensitive geographical query terms in May 2018 and found that Baidu’s algorithm exhibited characteristics of covert censorship, including (1) primarily referring users to domains hosted within China subject to overt censorship, (2) not providing links to foreign domains beyond the Great Firewall, and (3) rejecting images with sensitive tags, resulting in highly neutral or regime-loyal image results. In another study, Vuori and Paltemaa (2019) investigated the “overt censorship” (p. 391) in the search results of the Chinese search engine Sina Weibo, examining two thousand three hundred eighty-seven politically sensitive words and phrases. They found that the search engine filtering in authoritarian China follows a two-layered system, with short-lived political incidents being filtered temporarily, while words promoting oppositional awareness are continuously subject to censorship. Similarly, in Russia (as I detail in the next sections), studies on Yandex have demonstrated how Yandex prioritized pro-Kremlin narratives during oppositional protests in Russia (Kravets and Toepfl 2021), complied with authorities’ requests to remove undesired content (Daucè and Loveluck 2021; Makhortykh et al. 2022), and favored progovernmental news sources (Makhortykh et al. 2022). However, while this research has primarily focused on search algorithms, this study examines the strategic embedding of news in popular search engines from authoritarian states to disseminate propaganda, using Yandex as a case study. Furthermore, one notable characteristic of Yandex is its relative popularity outside of Russia, particularly in its immediate neighborhood. As part of its expansion efforts, according to Yandex’s official press releases, Yandex launched a Ukrainian version (yandex.com.ua) in 2005,8 a Kazakh version (yandex.kz) in 2009,9 English (yandex.com),10 and Belarusian (yandex.by) versions in 2010,4 and a Turkish version (yandex.com.tr) in 2011.11 One of the few studies to examine Yandex as a tool of Russia’s propaganda abroad is Kravets et al. (2023). In their study, Kravets et al. (2023) compared the visibility and narratives of COVID-19 conspiracy theories within web search results from Google and Yandex in Belarus at the peak of the first wave of the pandemic in 2020. They found that (1) Yandex was more than twice as likely as Google’s to feature undebunked conspiracy theories in its web search results, (2) Yandex was also more likely than Google to retrieve Russia-based and Kremlin-connected websites, and (3) search results on Yandex almost exclusively suspected plotters from the United States behind the outbreak of the pandemic. They conclude by suggesting that Yandex needs to be understood as a key resource of Russia’s foreign propaganda apparatus, as it helps increase the visibility of 6 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) pro-Kremlin content among foreign audiences. This study, however, expands upon Kravets et al. (2023) by auditing Yandex’s algorithms beyond those for web search and conducting a longitudinal analysis that enables an assessment of the gradual political appropriation of Yandex’s algorithms over time. Research on Yandex Within Russia Despite the key political relevance of Yandex as an algorithmic gatekeeper within Russia and beyond (Wijermars 2021), research into pro-Kremlin propaganda on Yandex is scarce. In one study, Kravets and Toepfl (2021) found that Yandex’s web and news search algorithms censored information about major opposition protests in Russia in 2017 and systematically forwarded users to regime-loyal websites. In another study, Makhortykh et al. (2022) compared Google and Yandex search results in 2021 for the query “smart voting”—an initiative by the Russian opposition aimed at uniting voters to strategically support candidates likely to defeat the ruling party’s candidates in electoral districts. They found that compared to Google, Yandex prioritized more websites with a negative assessment of the Smart Voting initiative: on average over ten search days, 34.7 percent of search results on Yandex featured anti-Smart Voting narratives, while on Google, it was only 2.7 percent. Yandex also linked only once to the original Smart Voting opposition website, while Google consistently returned links to opposition resources related to Smart Voting (Makhortykh et al. 2022). Additionally, studies also found Yandex to prioritize conspiratorial content (Kravets et al. 2023; Urman et al. 2022), the dissemination of conspiratorial content being one of the key strategies of Russia’s propaganda (see Kragh and Åsberg 2017; Yablokov 2015). Focusing on Yandex’s news aggregator service, Daucè and Loveluck (2021) analyzed the composition of Yandex’s top-5 news headlines in Russia from June to December 2020. They found that despite Yandex in Russia officially claiming to crawl over seven thousand of news sources to aggregate its top-5 selection, during the entire period under study, altogether only fourteen news sources, all Kremlin-connected, were cited in the top-5. Given this empirical evidence of political appropriation of Yandex’s algorithms by Russia’s ruling elites within Russia, this study aims to investigate whether the same holds true for Yandex’s top-5 news algorithm in Belarus. Furthermore, it goes beyond Daucè and Loveluck (2021) by analyzing both the sources and content of Yandex’s top-5 news headlines, conducting a longitudinal analysis, and reflecting on the role of Yandex’s top-5 news algorithms in facilitating Russia’s propaganda efforts abroad. Yandex’s History of Political Appropriation Founded in 1997, Yandex (Yet Another iNDEXer) has grown to become the most popular search engine in Russia, outperforming even Google. As of December 2023, around 70 percent of all search queries in Russia were fielded through Yandex.12 But Yandex’s homepage is much more than search: it is virtually the gateway to the Russian Internet. At the time of this research, Yandex offered news, weather reports, videos, Kravets 7 email and streaming services, blogs, taxi, and food delivery, all in one place. Although Yandex is registered in the Netherlands, a tactic commonly employed by Russian companies to attract foreign investment prior to the war, its founders have consistently insisted that Yandex is, fundamentally, a Russian entity.13 Despite Yandex’s initial resistance, the political appropriation of its algorithms by Russia’s ruling elites has progressed over the years, with Yandex’s top-5 news algorithm always attracting particular attention from the Russian authorities. Allegedly, Putin himself regularly monitors the top-5 news headlines on Yandex.14 Reportedly, Yandex began receiving regular visits from the Kremlin after the war in Georgia in 2008. Already then, the authorities demanded control over which media sources Yandex included in the top-5 news headlines.14 In 2009, then-President Dmitry Medvedev proclaimed Yandex to be an asset of national importance and its “golden share,” which gave Russian officials de facto control over Yandex’s strategic decisions, was sold to the state-owned bank Sberbank (Daucé and Loveluck 2021). From then on, Yandex faced intense regulatory measures in Russia, directing which websites to exclude from its services (Makhortykh et al. 2022) and which information to forward to authorities.15 The regulatory measures culminated in 2016 law “On news Aggregators,” which removed all nonregistered news websites with Roskomnadzor, the Russian state communications oversight agency from Yandex news services (Wijermars 2021). Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Union imposed sanctions on Yandex’s co-founder and CEO Arkady Volozh for helping promote pro-Kremlin and anti-Ukrainian propaganda during Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.16 Pressured by new laws against false information adopted in Russia, Yandex sold its news service, Yandex.News, together with an infotainment service, Yandex.Dzen, to the state-controlled company VK, which owns the same-called social network platform.17 Despite this transfer, which was completed on September 12, 2022, the news aggregator and the top news, now owned by VK, remained highly visible. For instance, in October 2022, when users typed yandex.ru into their browser, they were automatically redirected to dzen.ru, a platform strongly resembling the original Yandex’s homepage, even including Yandex’s search bar and the top news headlines (for a comparison, see Figure 2). Yandex itself moved to a new domain, ya.ru. The transition was subtle, suggesting that many users may not have even noticed the change. Figure 2. Screenshot of dzen.ru with the location set to Minsk on December 13, 2023. 8 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) Case Study Belarus: Russia’s Political Appropriation of Belarusian Media Despite the long-standing close ties between Russian and Belarusian political leadership, recent decades have seen increasing disputes between Vladimir Putin and Belarus’s incumbent dictator Lukashenka. At the same time, a significant share of the Belarusian population relies on Russian mass media for their daily news consumption, not least due to the widespread use of the Russian language in Belarus (Manaev et al. 2021). In response, Lukashenka has repeatedly sought to curb Russian media influence within Belarus (Szostek 2015). For example, during the 2010 “information war” (Szostek 2015: 123), triggered by disagreements over oil export duties and other political conflicts, the Belarusian government curtailed the distribution of Russian newspapers, cut cable transmissions of all major Russian channels, and restructured how Russian TV programs were broadcast in Belarus. These measures enabled the Belarusian state to exercise greater control over media content, among others, allowing for the removal or modification of Russian news segments when needed. These actions were a part of Lukashenka’s broader strategy to shield Belarus from Russian information campaigns (Szostek 2015). Nevertheless, Russian media maintain a strong presence. According to a report by the Belarusian Association of Journalists, in 2019, over 49 percent of Belarusian television content in prime time still was Russia-made, including 31 percent of all news programs and political talk shows.18 The continued influence of the Russian mass media on the Belarusian public is demonstrated by the extent to which Belarusians share the narratives that these media produce and disseminate. For example, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, according to the results of opinion polls, 60 percent of Belarusians shared the view presented by the Kremlin that the annexation was a just act of historical justice that returned Russian land to Russia, while the official position of Belarusian government was different.19 Yet Belarusian state media proved less effective in communicating this position to the public than their Russian counterparts. Furthermore, prior research has demonstrated that Russia regularly instrumentalizes its media resources in foreign policy endeavors. For example, in Belarus, Szostek (2015) found that during the 2010 dispute, “pro-Kremlin news providers [were] undoubtedly a tool in Moscow’s relations with Minsk” (p. 123). Similarly, Navumau (2020), who analyzed the narratives of Russia-backed media outlets in Belarus during Russia-Belarus negotiations on Belarus’ “further integration” (p. 461) into Russia in 2018–2019, suggests that Russia used these outlets “to increase Belarusian support [. . .] by promoting the Russian agenda and disseminating disinformation” (p. 469). A report by the East Center (Yeliseyeu 2019) identified about forty Russian news websites that regularly publish publications about Belarus and spread misinformation, propaganda, and hate speech about Belarus, and revealed that a full-fledged Kremlin-linked coordinated network of regional websites became active in Belarus in 2018. The 2020 Belarusian presidential election, followed by the mass protests that threatened Lukashenka’s regime, triggered a wave of repression against members of the independent press and media organizations in Belarus, along with broader efforts Kravets 9 to restrict access to independent information (Manaev et al. 2021). In a notable escalation, Putin responded to a request from Lukashenka in September 2020 by dispatching Russian propagandists—primarily from RT—to take control of Belarusian state media in an effort to suppress the protests, effectively cutting short Lukashenka’s earlier efforts to establish Belarus’ informational sovereignty.20 Notably, while Lukashenka’s government curtailed access to Russia’s traditional media channels, it largely refrained from interfering with Russia’s digital media outlets. As a result, Yandex has operated in Belarus with minimal political interference. Although the company maintains multiple offices outside Russia, little is known about the internal functioning of these regional branches—particularly regarding their editorial autonomy from Yandex’s Moscow headquarters. In Belarus, reports from 2021 indicate that Yandex’s Minsk office had around two hundred fifty employees and focused exclusively on software development for Yandex’s autonomous vehicles, maps, taxi service, music, advertising, and search engine.21 Notably, the office was not involved in the development of news algorithms and had thus no influence over the news content displayed on the Belarusian version of Yandex’s homepage.21 This distinction highlights a noteworthy asymmetry: while Yandex’s news algorithms were likely developed in Moscow, its other services were produced and adapted locally. Research Questions and Hypotheses Based on the research findings outlined in the previous sections, this study aims to examine the extent to which Yandex’s top-5 news algorithm has been used to disseminate Kremlin propaganda among Belarusian audience, and, exploring its evolution over time, to assess Yandex’s role as a tool of Russia’s informational influence abroad. Specifically, given the initial tendency of Yandex’s search algorithms in Belarus to favor Russia-based and Kremlin-connected websites (Kravets et al. 2023), and with the aim of scrutinizing Yandex’s claims of localization of its news services,4 I formulate the following research questions regarding Yandex’s top-5 news algorithm in Belarus: RQ1: How present were (a) Russia-based and (b) Kremlin-connected websites in Yandex’s top-5 news headlines in Belarus? RQ2: How visible were news featuring Russia in Yandex’s top-5 news headlines in Belarus? Furthermore, Yandex provides its users with the option to choose between the default “Now in the Media” headlines, which presumably present the most important local news, and “In the World” headlines. Accessing “In the World” headlines requires users to click on the corresponding section heading. To explore whether Russia-related news in Belarus was categorized as local interest by Yandex, I formulated an additional research question: 16 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) political topics consistently represented the largest category among Yandex’s top-5 news headlines at all times. Additional exploratory analysis revealed that the rise of political topics from late-2019 was most likely caused by the news about the regulations regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 presidential elections in Belarus, the following oppositional protests, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Presence of Kremlin-Critical News Sources on Yandex Decreased Over Time RQ5 examined the presence of Kremlin-critical news sources in Yandex’ top-5 news headlines over time. As Figure 8 illustrates, Western news broadcasters (e.g., dw.de and bbc.com) including all Ukrainian sources (e.g., pravda.com.ua and apostrophe. ua) completely disappeared from the Belarussian Yandex’s top-5 news selection between 2018 and 2019. At the same time disappeared also all Russian opposition news sources (e.g., meduza.io and novayagazeta.ru). However, Belarusian opposition websites (e.g., euroradio.fm and nn.by) remained visible until shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Discussion This study audited Yandex’s top-5 news algorithm in Belarus from 2010 to 2022 to assess its role as a transmitter of Russia’s propaganda to Belarusian audiences. I found that (1) on a monthly average, the majority (52.2%) of Yandex’s top-5 news in Belarus came from sources with explicit connections to Russia’s ruling elites, and (2) a substantial portion of the news was political, with the share of political news relative to Figure 7. Distribution of topics in Belarusian Yandex’ top-5 “Now in the Media” headlines from 2010 to 2022 (60-day rolling average in percent). Kravets 17 other types of news increasing over the analysis period. Additionally, I found (3) a pronounced presence of news featuring Russia and Russian actors, which appeared almost exclusively in Yandex’s default list of top domestic news for Belarus, compared to the top news happening in the world. Moreover, (4) there was a notable decline in the presence of Kremlin-critical news sources over time, marked by the complete disappearance of Western and Russian opposition websites in late 2018– 2019, and the disappearance of Belarusian opposition websites shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Yandex as a Tool of Russia’s Propaganda in Belarus Extant research has numerously accused Yandex’s algorithms of bias toward the interests of Russia’s ruling elites (Daucé and Loveluck 2021; Kravets and Toepfl 2021; Kravets et al. 2023; Makhortykh et al. 2022; Wijermars 2021), with some describing Yandex as a “key resource of Russia’s foreign propaganda apparatus” (Kravets et al. 2023: 2775). These studies, however, largely concentrated on Yandex’s web and news search algorithms, within Russia and over comparably brief durations. In contrast, this article investigated Yandex’s popular top-5 news algorithm in Belarus and across 12 years of its operation. My findings corroborate extant research (Kravets and Toepfl 2021; Kravets et al. 2023; Makhortykh et al. 2022), confirming that the biases observed in Yandex within Russia—specifically, the preference for Kremlin-connected websites and narratives—consistently extend to Belarus and to Yandex’s top-5 news algorithms. Specifically, Daucè and Loveluck (2021) discovered that, contrary to Yandex’s claim of sourcing its top-5 news headlines in Russia from over seven thousand news Figure 8. Shares of specific websites in Yandex’s top-5 “Now in the Media” news in Belarus from 2010 to 2022 (60-day rolling average in percent). Note. The “No data” period from April 28, 2018 to June 11, 2019 reflects the time when the sources of news headlines were not displayed on Yandex’s homepage. 18 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) outlets, only fourteen news sources—all Kremlin-connected—were cited in these headlines during their study period from June to December 2020. In contrast, my findings demonstrate that Yandex in Belarus for most time did not include solely Kremlin-connected sources, but regularly linked to Belarusian opposition news sources (see Figure 8). It is possible that permitting the circulation of news outlets critical of Lukashenka’s regime (e.g., nn.by and naviny.by) was, to some extent, advantageous for Russia’s ruling elites.27 This strategy could strengthen the dependence of Lukashenka’s regime on Russia’s support and weaken its resistance in disputed matters (see Navumau 2020; Szostek 2015). Remarkably, Yandex’s top-news algorithms continued to include Belarusian opposition sources even though they were blocked in Belarus (e.g., nn.by and ex-press.by). Russia’s ruling elites, who exert control over Yandex, could thus potentially employ its algorithms as an information leverage against Lukashenka’s regime, if necessary. Nevertheless, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022—when anti-Lukashenka content was likely viewed as a threat to Russia’s war efforts, given Lukashenka’s support for the war—Belarusian opposition sources almost completely disappeared from Yandex’s top news. On March 22, 2022, Lukashenka issued a law “About News Aggregators,”28 which prohibited news aggregators in Belarus from featuring websites blocked by the Belarusian government. After this date, Yandex’s selection of news headlines in Belarus excluded these blocked websites and featured only news from non-Kremlin-critical sources (see Figure 8). Another possible explanation for Yandex in Belarus including a broader range of sources compared to Russia is that, since January 2017, Yandex in Russia has been legally required to feature only sources licensed by Roskomnadzor, under the “On News Aggregators” law (see Wijermars 2021). However, this law does not extend to Belarus, meaning that the strategic decisions regarding which sources to include or exclude from the Belarusian top-5 were left to Yandex itself and those overseeing its operations. The timely disappearance of Belarusian opposition sources at the outset of the full-scale invasion—along with the gradual removal of Western international broadcasters and Russian opposition outlets, despite no legal requirement to do so in Belarus—with the overall tendency to feature Kremlin-connected sources, as well as an increasing focus on political news suggests a deliberate and strategic approach to content curation. This strategy appears to be tailored to Belarusian audiences and aligned with the broader geopolitical goals of Russia’s ruling elites. According to Jowett and O’Donnell (2012), propaganda tools are technologies employed to disseminate propaganda with the aim of controlling public opinion through the manipulation of perceptions. In this context, the operations of Yandex’s top-5 algorithm in Belarus appear to fit within the scope of such propaganda tools— selectively amplifying regime-aligned news websites and thereby effectively contributing to the management of public perception in a manner that supports the objectives of the Kremlin. To illustrate, there was a marked spike in both political (see Figure 7) and Russia-related news (see Figure 6) on Yandex in 2022, likely in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With only non-Kremlin-critical news outlets featured in the top news, Belarusian audiences on Yandex were likely Kravets 19 predominantly exposed to narratives favoring Russia’s perspective on the war. This selective exposure likely influenced Belarusian public support for the war. Furthermore, this study aimed to audit Yandex’s claims of localization in its news services.4 Indeed, my results indicated that Yandex increasingly featured Belarusbased sources (see Figure 4). For instance, in September 2022, 86.4 percent of news headlines originated from Belarus-based sources, while in September 2010 it was only 12.7 percent. In addition, Kremlin-controlled news websites based in Russia have nearly disappeared from Yandex’s news selection, replaced by Belarusian state media outlets (Figure 5), with the exception of Russia’s foreign propaganda outlets RT (sputnik.by) and Inforuss (inforuss.info), the regional editorial offices of major Russian domestic news outlets, such as Interfax (interfax.by), Komsomolskaya Pravda (kp.by), Argumenty i Fakty (aif.by), and Radio Mir (radiomir.by), and Kremlin-sponsored proxy new outlet 4esnok (4esnok.by). However, Lukashenka’s regime has become increasingly dependent on Russia over the years, effectively blurring the lines between Belarusian and Russian state-connected media. Consequently, while Yandex increasingly localized its services by featuring more Belarusian news sources, these sources most likely effectively mirrored Kremlin propaganda narratives, resulting in no significant content or ideological divergence. Additionally, my findings revealed that, despite Yandex’s proclaimed focus on local audiences, more than half of the sets of the top-5 news headlines in Belarus contained at least one news item related to Russia, and Russia-related news appeared almost exclusively (93.7%) in Yandex’s default domestic top news for Belarus as compared to the top news happening in the world (see RQ3). This selective representation played a significant role in promoting a sense of shared identity between Russians and Belarusians, thereby subtly propagating Russia’s banal nationalism (Billig 1995) among Belarusian audience. Implications The implications of these findings are manifold. After the beginning of Russia’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine, policymakers around the world have taken measures to curb the influence of Russia’s foreign communication outlets. For example, RT and Sputnik were banned in the majority of Western countries (Glazunova et al. 2023). However, Yandex’s services remained unaffected and widely accessible. The findings of this study support Daucé’s (2017) claims about the political appropriation of Yandex’s algorithms by Russia’s ruling elites over the years, and demonstrate how Russia’s legislative and regulatory measures have made Yandex a propaganda tool of the Kremlin. Furthermore, my findings indicate that biases in Yandex’s algorithms may not be limited to Yandex’s search algorithms; in fact, all of its algorithms, and thus the entire platform, could potentially be affected. While further research is needed to confirm these findings in contexts beyond Belarus, policymakers seeking to limit Russia’s propaganda efforts should consider restricting access to Yandex and its services, as it was done to other tools of Kremlin propaganda. Finally, as the findings of this study vividly demonstrate, platforms controlled by or under the jurisdiction of authoritarian regimes may be utilized to disseminate state propaganda and exercise influence over 20 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) foreign audiences, underscoring the necessity for robust oversight of these platforms (e.g., through regular algorithm audits). Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research While this study provides valuable insights, it has limitations that should be acknowledged. First, it focuses exclusively on Belarus as a country case for auditing Yandex’s operations abroad. Second, Belarus, while an interesting case, is also highly specific due to the widespread use of the Russian language and the close political relationship between the Russian and Belarusian ruling elites. While I believe my findings for Yandex’s top-5 news headlines in Belarus to be broadly generalizable to other countries where Yandex operates—particularly given that its news algorithms were most likely centrally managed from Russia—further comparative research is needed to substantiate this claim and examine for regional variations. In particular, it would be interesting to examine Yandex’s top-5 news in other post-Soviet countries, where Yandex has relatively large market shares (e.g., Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan). Third, this study has relevant limitations inherent in its data collection efforts (see the Section “Methodology” for more detail), particularly due to reliance on data from the Wayback Machine, which archived content irregularly and with an increasing frequency. Additionally, Yandex’s aggressive bot detection mechanisms restricted both the Wayback Machine’s and proprietary scraping efforts, resulting in fewer data points between September 2021 and June 2022. From April 2018 to June 2019, Yandex also did not display the sources of news headlines on its homepage, further contributing to data gaps in the source analysis. These gaps—while relatively short compared to the overall 12-year study period—may have affected the robustness of the longitudinal analyses, potentially underrepresenting trends and patterns during these intervals. From this backdrop, this study underscores the critical importance of extensive web scraping efforts and data archives, such as the Wayback Machine, for enabling longitudinal research in the digital age. Fourth, this study does not analyze specific propaganda narratives or compare the narratives between different Kremlin-connected websites (e.g., Belarusian state-connected and Russian). While prior research highlights the alignment between Belarusian and Russian Kremlin-controlled media (Manaev et al. 2021), future research could examine whether and how narrative framing differs between these sources and evaluate their respective roles in disseminating Kremlin-aligned messaging. Fifth, while this study employed algorithm audit to reverse-engineer the operation of Yandex’s top-5 news algorithms in Belarus, future research could enhance the solely descriptive findings by, for example, conducting interviews with (former) Yandex employees who could provide qualitative insight into Yandex’s decision-making process, as well as the extent and mechanisms of control and pressure exercised over Yandex by Russia’s ruling elites. Additionally, future research could audit Yandex’s other services for bias or security threats, compare the findings with Yandex.News’ successor, dzen.ru, or explore the role of mobile platforms in shaping access to Yandex’s top-5 news, particularly on Android devices, where Google News Kravets 21 are typically pre-installed. By following these lines of inquiry, future research could provide deeper insights into the complex mechanisms of Russia’s digital propaganda abroad. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [Grant agreement No. 819025]. It is part of the ERC consolidator project on “The Consequences of the Internet for Russia’s Informational Influence abroad” (www.rusinform.uni-passau.de/en). ORCID iD Daria Kravets https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5162-9931 Supplemental Material Supplemental material for this article is available online. Notes 1. https://web.archive.org/web/20241122145915/https://yandex.ru/blog/company/76641. 2. https://radar.yandex.ru/search?period=2021-11-08%3A2024-11-07&group=day&is_metric _ratio=0. 3. https://www.baidu.com/. 4. https://web.archive.org/web/20241122142626/https://yandex.ru/company/news/2010-0414. 5. https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/belarus. 6. https://www.similarweb.com/website/yandex.ru. 7. https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/. 8. https://web.archive.org/web/20241122134616/https://yandex.ru/company/news/2005-0920. 9. https://web.archive.org/web/20241122134933/https://yandex.ru/company/news/2009-1014. 10. https://web.archive.org/web/20241122135327/https://yandex.ru/company/news/2010-0519. 11. https://web.archive.org/web/20241122143538/https://yandex.com/company/press_center/ press_releases/2011/2011-09-20/. 12. https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/russian-federation. 13. http://www.plam.ru/bislit/runetologija_kto_upravljaet_russkim_internetom/p17.php. 14. https://www.republik.ch/2022/07/14/yandex-ein-tech-unternehmen-kreiert-zombies. 15. https://meduza.io/feature/2020/10/26/yandeks-vpervye-rasskazal-o-vydache-dannyh-rossiyanpo-zaprosam-vlastey. 16. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ%3AL%3A2022%3A153%3 AFULL. 17. https://www.republik.ch/2022/07/14/yandex-ein-tech-unternehmen-kreiert-zombies. 18. https://baj.media/sites/default/files/analytics/files/2019/monitoring-of-pro-russian-propaganda-in-belarusian-media-.pdf. 22 The International Journal of Press/Politics 00(0) 19. https://baj.media/sites/default/files/event/files/2020/report_media2020_rus.pdf. 20. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-belarus-election-russia-journalists/belarusian-leadercredits-russian-tv-for-helping-him-survive-media-strike-idUSKBN25T1GH/. 21. https://news.zerkalo.io/life/48163.html. 22. https://github.com/jsvine/waybackpack. 23. https://meduza.io/feature/2016/05/13/razgrom-rbk-korotko. 24. https://baj.media/ru/analytics/prodvizhenie-russkogo-mira-idet-cherez-belorusskie-tvkanaly-bazh-prezentoval-monitoring. 25. https://osf.io/pxq28/. 26. https://spacy.io/. 27. https://www.gmfus.org/news/puzzled-belarus-russia-struggles-respond. 28. https://president.gov.by/ru/documents/ukaz-no-116-ot-22-marta-2022-g. 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