What is Sputnik News? [View all]

[Nye Bevan]

Sputnik is an international multimedia service launched on 10 November 2014 by Rossiya Segodnya, an agency wholly owned and operated by the Russian government, which was created by a Decree of the President of Russia on December 9, 2013.[2] Sputnik replaces the RIA Novosti news agency on an international stage (which remains active in Russia)[3] and Voice of Russia.

....

Alexander Podrabinek, a Russian journalist who works for Radio France Internationale[6][7] (a French public radio service that operates under the auspices and primary budget of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty[8] (a 501(c)(3) corporation that receives U.S. government funding and is supervised by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a nonprofit agency overseeing all U.S. federal government international broadcasting services), has called Sputnik a tool of Russian state propaganda distribution abroad,[5] and has likened it to a pro-Putin version of the Daily Mail and described it as "anti-Western".[9]

Wikipedia link

So any time a real-life friend points you to a Sputnik "news" story, just bear in mind that it's effectively a Kremlin press release.

BTW it's quite curious that the "About Us" page on Sputnik "News" itself does not mention that it is Russian-government controlled:

http://sputniknews.com/docs/about/index.html