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The portal features news in the Latvian and Russian languages about the current events in Latvia, Russia, and elsewhere in the world. The portal will focus "on what everyone else prefers not to notice".

The Sputniknews.lv domain has been registered by the Russian state information agency Rossiya Segodnya. There are a couple of e-mail addresses for submitting press releases, cooperation and advertising offers, but no other contact information is available, including on who write the articles published on the portal, or who are the portal's editors.

Sputnik is part of the Russian state information agency Rossiya Segodnya, headed by Dmitry Kiselyov who has been included in the European Union's sanctions list following his propaganda supporting Russia's incursion into Ukraine.

Rossiya Segodnya was established at the end of 2013 after the RIA Novosti news agency was reorganized. The Russian president's administration said that state funds should not be spent on generating unbiased news reports but on more active dissemination of the official position of Russia abroad.

Last year Sputnik said it was planning be on air in more than thirty countries.

Latvian State television reported last February that Sputnik was about to expand into Latvia and was hiring journalists.

Sputnik said it was planning to launch an online site in Latvia in two languages – Russian and Latvian. The target audience would be young people.

In August 2015, the Register of Enterprises decided not to enter the Russian state-owned information agency Russia Today in the list of representations registered in Latvia the Register of Enterprises.

The decision was taken by a state notary of the Register of Enterprises who had concluded that the application for the registration of Russia Today representation in Latvia did not conform to the Latvian Constitution and other laws and regulations of Latvia.

The Register of Enterprises also requested the National Electronic Mass Media Council's opinion on the matter. The council said it believed that the goal of Russia Today was to disseminate such information in the information space of Latvia that would help the Russian Federation pursue its foreign policy interests. The council also said it had registered violations by several mass media that had broadcast or retransmitted tendentious information about Russia and Russia's international activities.