Sonja van den Ende

Sonja van den Ende is a Dutch citizen journalist and political activist. She reported on the wars in Syria and later the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In her reporting she is critical of the mainstream media in the Western world, which she accuses of spreading lies about Russia and the wars in Ukraine and Syria. In turn, her reporting has been described by said media (ex. De Telegraaf or The New York Times) as pro-Russian and affiliated with Russian propaganda and disinformation.

Career

Politics

In 2011, Van den Ende was a candidate Member of Parliament for the province of Overijssel on behalf of the Socialist Party (SP). She was very active in the SP-led demonstrations against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in support for Palestine and Hamas. However, during the war in Syria, her pro-Assad and pro-Russian stance led to disagreement with the SP and subsequently she left the party.

She has also been associated with the New Communist Party of the Netherlands.

Journalism

Later, Van den Ende became a citizen journalist, releasing reports through social media websites such as Facebook and alternative media platforms such as DeWereldMorgen or CovertAction Magazine. Some of the alternative media outlets she has been associated with have been identified as part of Russian disinformation campaigns, such as Oneworld Press. In her reporting she has also downplayed the issue of climate change.

In her reports on the war in Syria, she has accused the West of mass murder and sponsoring Jihadism, and she has portrayed Russians as a stabilizing and peacekeeping force in the region. In 2012, she claimed that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad "is not a dictator", and a year later, she denied that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons. In summer 2015, she visited Syria as part of an initiative organized by the Syrian government and did so again in 2018.

In March 2022, Van den Ende was invited by an organization associated with the Russian political activist Aleksandr Dugin to report from the Russian-occupied Donbas on the invasion of Ukraine. She was the only Dutch journalist to report from the Russian side of the frontline, as part of an initiative supported by the Russian Ministry of Defense. That initiative also involved several dozen other Western journalists from smaller media outlets and activists, including American YouTuber Patrick Lancaster.

In her reporting, she criticized the mainstream media in the West, which she accused of fake news and lies, and supported the Russian narrative. In her articles and social media posts, she questioned Russian responsibility for the Butcha massacre as well as the Mariupol hospital airstrike. She referred to Russian advances as "liberation", called the conflict a "special military operation", emphasized the strength of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine, and blamed the destruction of Ukrainian settlements such as Volnovakha on Ukrainian forces. She referred to Ukrainian mayor of Melitpol, Ivan Fedorov, as a "right-wing extremist". In the same vein, after the Battle of Mariupol, she reported from the ruins of that city that the widespread destruction of the city is the result of the actions of the Ukrainian army (she blaimed the Azov Battalion in particular), and not, as is generally believed, by the Russian forces. After the tour she offered a testimony to the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation saying that Ukraine had committed war crimes. In June that year she endorsed the Ukraine bioweapons conspiracy theory. She also claimed that the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by Ukrainian forces.

Later that year, Van den Ende was among the foreign observers for the referenda concerning the Russian annexation of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts of Ukraine which she praised as fair. She was also the observer at the 2023 elections in Russian-occupied Ukraine. In August that year she promoted a fake news report about alleged corruption of Ukraine's president family in social media (Twitter).

From the late 2010s, she has had a Russian residence permit where she also received a furnished apartment. Van den Ende told the Russian media that her name has been included in the Ukrainian Myrotvorets list on enemies of Ukraine, and that she will not return to the Netherlands for fear of persecution because of her position on the Donbas. She also claimed that "Democratic Ukraine and the US (CIA) have put me on the death list" and that her reporting is "censored in Europe".

Assessment

Criticism by Western media and NGOs

In 2022, the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf described her activity as "tirelessly following the Kremlin narrative" and noted her fondness for conspiracy theories. Other Dutch newspapers (Het Parool, Algemeen Dagblad) cited Louk Faesen, a scholar studying Russian disinformation at The Hague Center for Strategic Studies, who argued that Van den Ende's journalism is used by Russian state for publicity purposes and that she repeats Russian propaganda and disinformation in order to discredit Western media. In 2024, The New York Times noted in an article entitled "Elaborate Tales of Fake Journalists" that her articles "have previously appeared on propaganda outlets linked to the Russian government."

Van den Ende is described as a "Russian foreign propagandist" by the Ukrainian OSINT organization Molfar. FactCheck Georgia described her as a "propagandist of the Kremlin". She is described as a "politically biased election observer" and "a pro-Russian conspiracy theorist" by the European Platform for Democratic Elections. The Dutch investigative journalism website Pointer (associated with the KRO-NCRV broadcaster) described her reporting from Russia as a "propaganda tour" for the Russian state, and her activities as "of great importance for the spread of Russian propaganda".

Following criticism of her reporting in mid-2022, the alternative media platform, DeWereldMorgen which has previously published some of her stories, deleted all of her posts there.

Endorsement by Russian and Chinese media

Her reporting has been praised and cited in Russian state media, as a rare example of Western journalism that "does not tell lies", and she has been interviewed by the Russian media on several occasions. Van den Ende herself has described her views as "a bit pro-Russian". She has also been cited in similar fashion by Chinese state media.