🧵 As pro-Kremlin disinfo network Matryoshka expanded to TikTok, it started to gain quite an engagement.

This is the first such a case that we encountered.

Fake video says: "Every third refugee from Ukraine intends to leave Poland after the presidential election, a poll shows"
2/4

While we can't validate authenticity of Views, Likes, Bookmarks or Reposts counts, the most popular replies look like the video has resonated with the audience

(machine translated from Polish)

🧵 Russian state-aligned disinfo bot network codenamed Matryoshka has expanded to TikTok yesterday, complementing its regular X/Twitter presence.

On the same day the network has likely stopped its activity on BlueSky. 1/9 2/9

Matryoshka is infamous for posting only fake visuals: doctored photos of street art; videos and front pages impersonating media outlets, universities and public agencies.

So the very fact of a visual posted by the 🪆 network is on its own a strong indicator of a forgery.

🧵 Russian state is happy to manipulate public debate following the Pavel @Durov, @FranceDiplo / DGSE statements on Romanian elections.

These fake videos and covers impersonating 🇫🇷 state agencies and reputable media brands have been posted on May 20 by Matryoshka bot network. 2/
Most of the fake visuals amplify @Durov's claims and exploit the controversy to damage trust to 🇫🇷 government.

However, the bigger picture seems to be that Russian state accuses the West of its own crimes, following Kremlin's presumed earlier interference to 🇷🇴 elections.

🧵 Pro-Kremlin disinfo network "Matryoshka" this Friday targeted the Reporters Without Borders (@RSF_inter) with a special episode.

With hijacked RSF logo, they falsely labelled several genuine videos* as fake using a fraudulent 'INFOX' watermark.

1/7 2/7

As @_ColinGerard points out, this could be a direct response to RSF's recent report exposing how Matryoshka / Storm-1679 is repeatedly impersonating RSF to promote Kremlin's narratives:

🇫🇷: rsf.org/fr/comment-la-…

🇷🇺: rsf.org/sites/default/…

x.com/ThibautBruttin…

Pro-Kremlin disinfo network "Matryoshka":

"As a part of a corrupt scheme, Macron knowingly imposed COVID-19 vaccines that harmed French people's fertility, dramatically shifting birth rates in favor of immigrant populations."

🧵 1/4 2/4

As in many previous episodes across many campaigns, Matryoshka used AI-cloned voices here to repurpose pre-existing authentic videos from scholars to allegedly claim any talking points deemed useful to Kremlin at the moment.

🧵 In 3 days, pro-Kremlin fake-video operation received 3 debunking statements from FBI, totaling 1.5M views and counting.

This operation is active since at least Sept 2023. My team was first to report this operation back in Jan 2024, we codenamed it Matryoshka 🪆 (Russian Doll) 2/

Never before has Matryoshka gained that much attention from a govt agency, in the US or overseas, at the low cost of a dozen fake videos, which is literally half of its daily(!) capacity.

These statements alone gave so much airtime that it could not possibly dream of.

🧵 To influence US elections with FAKE videos, Kremlin reused half a dozen ideas from its earlier campaigns targeting Macron, Paris Olympics and, of course, Ukrainian refugees and aid to Ukraine.

Some of them ⏬, based on our 10 months of tracking Matryoshka influence operation: 2/ (Keep in mind:

• all of those videos were fabricated, they were never published by a respective media outlet or govt agency

• most of these videos never got any traction. I am only showing them to expose disinfo methods of the Russian state, not to debunk those videos)

@FBI 1. Both of the videos referred to by @FBI appeared on X/Twitter first posted by Matryoshka, a Russian state influence operation, which is ongoing since Sept 2023.

My team first exposed the operation in Jan 2024, as covered in partnership with AFP:  factuel.afp.com/doc.afp.com.34…
@FBI 2. The operation was later corroborated by @Viginum_Gouv, French agency monitoring and protecting against foreign digital interference (part of General Secretariat of Defense and National Security): sgdsn.gouv.fr/files/files/20…

4 days before the US election, Russian state disinfo is at full blast.

Matryoshka bots that only post intentional fake videos have made a record-breaking 21 posts. Most of them are targeting the US elections.

🧵 1/13 2/13

If you encounter in the wild any of the videos below, please let me know: I'm interested if any of these gets any traction.

A large part of the following collection were contributed by dTeam; others were also found by ourselves.

Building a sophisticated troll network at scale had never been cheaper and easier—thanks to AI capabilities.

Even if you are not Russia, China or Iran, now you can influence Western countries towards far-right, populist parties (AfD, RN, PiS…) and isolating from each other.

1/ This is exactly what UAE* did: with AI-powered operation targeting 🇺🇸🇨🇦🇬🇧🇫🇷🇩🇪🇵🇱🇪🇸🇮🇹 and the Gulf states, it weaponized COP29, a UN climate change conference in Azerbaijan.

2300+ accounts in 8 languages pushing country-specific narratives with highly-realistic fake personas.

2/

For nearly a year, pro-Kremlin bots of Doppelganger are using fake celebrity quotes to endorse its talking points.

Now they try the opposite way: a toxic celebrity is given fake quotes to smear Kamala Harris and aid to Ukraine.

1/3 Before Doppelgänger, P. Diddy was broadly featured in fake videos / graffiti posted by pro-Kremlin Matryoshka (Op Overload) bots.

The earliest video with P. Diddy appeared on Sept 27.

2/3

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.

🧵 "Lea Thompson congratulated Brigitte Macron on 40th anniversary of her gender transition"

Such a video was first published by Telegram channel BelShkvarka, in a series "Sent in by a subscriber" that is a frequent source of fake videos for Matryoshka bots.

1/

The most likely origin of that is @BookCameo where one can order a personalized video from a celebrity; for Lea Thompson it's only $125 with earliest delivery in 24h.

@LeaKThompson never mentioned Macron, so it could look like a innocent order with no political implication.

2/

🧵 Beyond Doppelgänger, Russian state seeks to influence the National Assembly elections with Matryoshka, another online influence operation.

Started in Sep 2023 with weakening Western aid to Ukraine, it later proceeded to Paris Olympics 2024--until the last week.

1/ Each week brings new fake videos, always under a stolen branding of a reputable media or organization; often allegedly quoting famous experts.

Eg. @PaulEkman, a psychologist studying relation of emotions to facial expressions. Or American Psychological Association @APA.

2/

🧵 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:

2/ rrn.media/fr/les-electeu…

🧵 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:

https://x.com/svtnyheter/status/1799381819126939695

2. We also showed that in a most visual way we can think of, basing on a 07/08 June night alone.

For France: 

https://x.com/antibot4navalny/status/1799480727719010780

🇩🇪 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."



2/ archive.today/Q7KjB

🇫🇷 FRANCE: Last night, pro-Kremlin bots🤖 were seeking to influence public debate around EU elections in favor of right-wing RN.

Fake clones of @Le_Parisien and @LePoint were used, but also authentic @Le_Figaro and more.

Similar to 🇩🇪, they messed it up most of time. 🧵

1/

📢 Fake @Le_Parisien article: For sovereignty, vote for "National Rally", not for Macron. As Marine Le Pen says, he only ruins the country.



2/ archive.today/DTjT0

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/

What narrative Kremlin pushes on the foreign-agents related protests in Georgia?

"🇺🇸 intervenes into 🇬🇪's internal affairs: installs puppet president, finances protests. All to weaken 🇷🇺's southern borders, to close path for 🇷🇺 to the civilized world. EU should protect 🇬🇪"

1/7

It was pushed to the German audience by Doppelganger, Kremlin's influence campaign long-known for researchers.

Using its bots; promoting an article from its site WanderFalke (), which was exposed by Meta back in Aug-Nov 2023:


2/7 urlscan.io/result/8e2d7ff…
transparency.fb.com/sr/Q2-2023-Adv…

🧵How did Kremlin try to exploit the US campus protests?

It amplified the conspiracy about Soros funding, both for 🇺🇸 and 🇮🇱 audience.

For 🇺🇸, bots posed as hardworking Americans not caring about Gaza who just can't stand seeing rioters are paid as much as them, for nothing.
1/

For Israeli users, another crowd of bots posed at the very same night as their fellow citizens concerned that higher powers are going to destroy their home country.

2/