Sonja van den Ende

Sonja van den Ende is a Dutch blogger and political activist who has been described as a Russian propagandist producing disinformation by the Ukrainian OSINT organization Molfar, and as "a pro-Russian conspiracy theorist" by the European Platform for Democratic Elections. 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. In 2012, Van den Ende 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. After visiting Donbas on a press tour in 2022, Van Den Ende offered a testimony to the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation saying that Ukraine had committed war crimes. She was also the observer at the 2023 elections in Russian-occupied Ukraine. Van den Ende has downplayed the issue of climate change.

Van den Ende told the Russian media that her name has been included in the Ukrainian Myrotvorets list as an enemy 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".

In 2022, the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf described Van den Ende's output 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. Following criticism of her reporting in mid-2022, the alternative media platform, DeWereldMorgen which has previously published some of her work, deleted all her articles there.

Van den Ende's 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. She has also been cited in similar fashion by Chinese state media. Van den Ende herself has described her own views as "a bit pro-Russian".