1/ As the UK experiences its most significant riots since 2011, the Kremlin is happy to exploit the situation to its benefit by:
🔥 adding fuel to the fire of the #UKriots
🔥 inciting similar tensions in France¹⁶
🔥 weakening support for Ukraine¹⁷
🧵 Thread:
2/ Since Aug 7, Matryoshka, a pro-Kremlin network, uses bots to flood X/Twitter with fake visuals (videos, street art, and doctored covers) related to the Southport events.
The goal is to overload fact checkers with illegitimate reports and to boost virality of false narratives.
3/ Matryoshka uses fake visuals to better serve its goal. Compared to genuine news, they:
🎯have a greater disinfo impact if they go viral
🎯keep fact-checkers busy longer
That's why a visual promoted by Matryoshka is, by itself, a strong marker of its intentional false nature.
4/ According to our records, the Southport-triggered riots have become the second-largest event targeted by Matryoshka network, right after the Paris 2024 Olympics.
The following thread exposes the wide range of narratives used by the Kremlin to sow discord and undermine trust.
5/ Fake cover of @DailyMirror / lead paragraph:
"The UK is losing the demographic race to immigrants.
"By 2035, 9 out of 10 people will be practicing Islam"
6/ Fake UK Secret Intelligence Service video:
"Muslim immigrants living in the UK are advised to not let their children go out unaccompanied.
"A child traveling alone becomes an easy target for attacks.
"Far-right activists have been spreading calls to attack muslim children."
7/ Fake @BBCNews video with chief rabbi of the UK:
"The only way to defeat violence committed by Muslim immigrants is to reduce number of mosques in the UK.
"Mosques are springing up replacing Anglican churches; serve as permission for any violence against the Britons."
8/ Fake Aljazeera (@AJEnglish) video with the principal leader of the Church of England:
"More mosques have to be built in the UK: better access to mosques could pre-empt violence in Southport."
9/ Fake "Instagram stories" from DailyMail (@MailOnline), @BBCnews, @TheSun alleging:
@Darren_Cullen's street art with princess Diana:
"Great that I'm dead now and can't see all the shit that's going on in the UK"
10/ Fake @BBCnews video:
"@RishiSunak (former British PM) liked several radical-Islamist posts on Instagram calling for violence against Britons"
11/ Fake UK Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) / @Radisson video:
"Avoid visiting bars due to high terrorism threat.
"Provocations could be committed by both the right-wing extremists and radicalized migrant groups.
"Acting irresponsibly jeopardizes the safety of the entire UK"
12/ Fake @BBCnews video:
"British art declares war on Islam. 5 British artists will depict an online caricature of Prophet Muhammad.
"All funds raised will be used to cover lawyers fees for Britons detained by police during far-right riots."
13/ Fake Mirror (@DailyMirror) video:
"According to a neural network, Britain in 2035 will be full of mosques, Muslim-origin citizens and shops."
14/ Fake @BBCnews video with head of the synagogal body in London:
"Stop sponsoring Muslim immigrants.
"Every pound left as a tip to a Muslim serves as a payment for future chaos.
"Migration allowances for Muslims should be abolished; that money should go to the police"
15/ Fake UK Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) video:
"Avoid visiting restaurants where Muslim migrants work
"Your appearance can provoke an employee who is a Muslim immigrant."
16/ Fake @BFMTV video with a former Interior Minister of France:
"When a migrant killed 3 young children in the UK, the English showed their anger.
"When migrants killed 6 French citizens, the French stayed silent: we only see the Olympics in the news"
17/ Fake cover of The @Independent:
"While we were following Ukraine, we lost our country"
(Kremlin likely implying: the UK authorities should focus on domestic agenda, stop being involved in Russia-Ukraine war)
18/ Fake cover of @Daily_Express with Ukraine ambassador in the UK:
"Ukrainian authorities with their decisive actions would have never let such organized violent banditry happen.
"Ukraine can serve as an example for the whole of Europe on how to nip unrest and neutralize it."
19/
(Kremlin's likely intent in 18/: drive a wedge between the UK and Ukraine; imply that Ukraine should deal with its problems first before advising to the UK)
20/ Most of the credits for this thread should be given to:
👏 my team that meticulously collects every piece of Matryoshka public content posted on X/Twitter;
👏 @SourcesOuvertes who has invested a huge amount of time and effort into editing this thread.
21/21
If you are a fact checker, disinfo researcher or a media celebrity, most likely Matryoshka bots were trying to reach you via mentions, direct messages or email.
Please send us the content they are promoting: that will help us ensure we have not missed something important.
22/21
For background of how Matryoshka operates, refer to:
🧵 Russian state-sponsored RRN, a signature site of Doppelgänger influence operation, and its bots are amplifying and legitimizing the fake site suggesting that Emmanuel Macron and his party are (were) buying votes for €100 for the snap election to National Assembly (France)
1/
Tweets and the article machine-translated to English.
I only kept text part of the article to fit into a single image. Full article available at:
As previously exposed by @gnidaproject, ensemble-24[.]fr mimicking the official ensemble-2024[.]fr, was registered on June 19 2024 with an email address at @ProtonMail--which is one of the most popular servers for those looking to hide their identity.
🧵 1. Pro-Kremlin Doppelgänger bots were manipulating voters against the incumbent leaders and in favor of AfD and BSW in Germany, RN in France, most of the time over months of our monitoring.
As demonstrated by Swedish TV last Sat, based on our data:
🇩🇪 GERMANY: Just 24h before EU parliament elections, pro-Kremlin bots🤖 were seeking to influence voters towards populist AfD/BSW last night.
Fake clones of @Welt and @DerSpiegel were used, as well as Kremlin-controlled sites.
As with 🇫🇷, they messed up most of it though.🧵1/
📢 Fake @DerSpiegel article:
Sarah Wagenknecht [populist left-wing BSW] strongly criticized Scholz for allowing Ukraine to attack Russia with Western weapons. "In the end, that is against interests of Germany. We need to avoid WW3 at all costs."
🤖 Pro-Kremlin bots of Döppelganger influence operation, mass-posting the fake Spiegel article:
Scholz only cares of Ukraine. It's time for change, to focus on domestic affairs. We will vote for BSW. We need leaders like Sarah Wagenknecht to stop funding war.
1 June: 5 coffins were found near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, covered with 🇫🇷 flag, with a banner "French soldiers from Ukraine"
5 June: pro-Kremlin bots pretending "ordinary Charlottas and Louisas" are criticizing Macron for considering to send "their husbands" to Ukraine
🧵 1/
Previously on Doppelganger:
May 14: Shoah Memorial in Paris got painted with blood-red hands graffitis, pretending to be an authentic antisemitic act
May 16: pro-Kremlins bots criticize Macron for not fighting anti-semitism (translated from French for my non-FR readers).
2/
Oct 26/27 night: David stars are painted in multiple locations across Paris, suggesting threats of antisemitic pogroms
Oct 28/29 night: pro-Kremlin Doppelganger bots are tweeting unique(!) photos of ✡️, expressing "deepest concerns" about them in French, English and German