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no...

I *think* around the middle of the 20th century there were some communist movements in Latin America and that led to some people to naming their children after communist leaders or just random Russian names. Also in Brazil Russian literature (like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky) was highly regarded, which is why you can find a lot of Natashas and Andreys (from War and Peace). Nowadays it's probably just fashionable as the other responder said..

Here, in Argentina, it's only "fashion". Some mothers like that kind of names; there's no a special reason. However, I think that could be because of Vladimir Puttin. For what I know, in Rusia they say [vla - DEE - mir]; here instead we use [vla -dee- MIR]. Regards.