'A huge vanity project' - when Sputnik crash-landed in Scotland

Ten years ago, an alien object entered Scotland's airspace for the first time.

The website and internet radio station Sputnik News was named after the first man-made satellite which was launched into space in 1957.

The size of a basketball, the original Sputnik emitted a simple beep for three weeks before its battery died.

But the signal it sent the world's governments was much more significant. It showed that the Soviet Union was winning the space race, and that news jolted the west into action.

Almost 60 years later, its namesake was met with similar alarm.

Sputnik News is not like other media organisations. Wholly owned by the Russian government, it's widely recognised as a propaganda tool for President Vladimir Putin.

And in August 2016 it brought a new era of state-sponsored disinformation to Britain at a crucial time in its recent history.

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Sputnik's Edinburgh operation lasted barely five years, and throughout that time faced accusations of stoking conspiracy theories to destabilise the UK.

A decade on, it's tempting to look back on its time in Scotland as a weird blip or just another failed media enterprise.

But that would be a mistake, according to former SNP MP Stewart McDonald.

"We are a society ripe for hostile disinformation," he says. "We're deeply divided, we're polarised politically, we're polarised socially. We struggle economically.

"That's perfect for hostile disinformation operations. And that's what Russian state media does.

The Scotland in which Sputnik landed in 2016 was going through a turbulent time. In the wake of the 2014 independence referendum , a wave of new media enterprises were making the case for independence.

Established online outlets Wings over Scotland and Bella Caledonia were joined by digital news platforms CommonSpace and Broadcasting Scotland.

Carolyn Scott was one of the many young activist-journalists drawn to this new media landscape.

A folk singer and musician, she'd become increasingly politically active during the referendum, alongside a friend from the traditional music scene, Jack Foster. The pair ran a folk music podcast for a few years but had never managed to make money from it.

Then, according to Carolyn: "The day after the referendum, Jack contacted me about setting up a new media company and we got some crowdfunding to kind of see what was feasible. We did that for a year.

"We launched a weekly podcast that turned into four or five weekly podcasts and then some kind of YouTube TV stuff as well... but the whole time we had like zero income."

They had an audience, but not enough to make a living, and so towards the end of 2015 they were forced to wrap up the company

The Russian state-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya set up Sputnik in November 2014 as a sister service to RT – formerly Russia Today – the Kremlin's global television news service. Both broadcast the Putin government's view of foreign affairs around the world.

Dr Ammon Cheskin is an expert on Russian politics at the University of Glasgow. He sees the Sputnik of 2016 as part of a strategy of projecting Russian might.

"It looked like the sort of thing a great power would do," he says.

"In the same way that the UK might have the BBC, they would have this network of journalists. I think it was a kind of a facade of great power status.

"Anybody that studies Russian foreign policy knows that one of the key priorities has been to prove that Russia is actually a great power on par with all the other great powers in the world."

Carolyn Scott was aware there were questions around Sputnik's editorial independence but believes the more established RT was not then seen as beyond the pale.

"Throughout 2014 and 2015, RT had managed to get itself into a place where it had an OK reputation, a fairly decent reputation in a lot of the circles that we were kind of active in," she says.

"There were a lot of political commentators from across Scotland and the UK hosting their own shows on RT. And it was very much billed to us as it's just a radio version of that."

"I certainly didn't go into the job singing and dancing and thinking: 'This is amazing, this is spectacular, it's going to be brilliant'," she says.

"It was: 'I need to pay my bills, and this is going to help wipe out some debt'. And we were going to have pretty much editorial freedom to just run our own show."

Sputnik launched from Edinburgh in August 2016 and the response from the native media was sceptical, even hostile. It was immediately suspected of coming to Scotland to create and amplify tensions within the UK.

The Daily Record dubbed it "Radio Gaga" and accused it of running stories that the independence referendum had been rigged.

The Herald called it "Putin's Sputnik" and an editorial in The Times said: "Those Nationalists who welcome the arrival of Sputnik are ignoring the Russian leader's record as an autocratic ruler."

Carolyn had signed up to co-present a daily radio programme. Immediately, she felt there were problems.

"It was an absolute chaotic mess. The idea that Sputnik could influence any election or referendum in this country was laughable. They wouldn't even influence a local dog show," she says.

"They had no idea what they were doing. The staff base was completely inexperienced. There was a woman who was basically brought in as an executive producer. Her background was that she was a hotel receptionist."

Nevertheless, Sputnik was seen as relentlessly anti-Nato, pro-Russian, and pro-Donald Trump. Later, it would be accused of peddling conspiracy theories about the Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

It's important to remember the context in which Sputnik was operating in 2016.

The UK had just voted to leave the European Union and David Cameron had stood down as prime minister, to be replaced by Theresa May.

Brexit dominated UK politics and in Scotland that, coupled with the legacy of the independence vote two years earlier, contributed to the SNP dominating the 2015 and 2016 Westminster and Holyrood elections.