The Kremlin-backed operation, known as Matryoshka, has Hollywood actors telling voters to disavow the Democratic Party and vote Republican.
Russian disinformation campaign sets sights on US midterms
A Russian disinformation operation has turned its attention to the US midterm elections, unleashing a series of deepfake videos that depict celebrities attacking Democrats, researchers said, with more…
Russian Bots Manipulate View Counts on Fake Videos Ahead of US Midterms
State-backed Matryoshka campaign targeting Democrats inflates view counts of fabricated stories, creating illusion of popularity.
Kremlin-linked Matryoshka bot network spreads disinfo about a looming hantavirus pandemic in Europe, despite scientists pointing to low risk
The Kremlin-linked “Matryoshka” bot network is spreading videos and images disguised as content produced by reputable Western media outlets warning readers of…
Russia Aims to Inject Chaos Into Elections, U.S. Intelligence Finds
The Kremlin is once again seeking to undermine confidence in American democracy with online influence campaigns, U.S. officials said.
Russia Aims to Inject Chaos Into Elections, U.S. Intelligence Finds
The Kremlin is once again seeking to undermine confidence in American democracy with online influence campaigns, U.S. officials said.
The Plot to Subvert an Election: Unraveling the Russia Story So Far (Published 2018)
For two years, Americans have tried to absorb the details of the 2016 attack: spies, leaked emails, social media fraud — and President Trump’s claims that it’s all a hoax. The Times explores what we know and what it means.
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter remove disinformation targeting Ukraine
Facebook parent company Meta says it has uncovered Russian efforts to undermine trust in the Ukrainian government and to hack Ukrainian military officials and journalists using social media.
Russian bot farms are still trolling, even after Ukraine’s drone strikes on Yandex
Call it disinformation about disinformation.
The Russian ‘counterterrorism’ unit behind Alexei Navalny’s poisoning tried to automate its search for domestic dissent using Meta’s Llama 2. After a year and a half, the project collapsed. — Meduza
The FSB’s Second Service is officially charged with protecting the constitutional order and combating terrorism. In practice, the unit works to stamp out dissent in Russia: it has plotted the assassinations of opposition politicians, works to restrict internet access, and monitors the news for signs of dissent. To automate that last job, the “Dvoyka” — as the Second Service is known — commissioned an AI-powered system for monitoring news outlets and social media in the spring of 2024. The developer was the Kazan-based company Mikord, which had also worked on components of Russia’s unified military registry and was hacked in December 2025. iStories examined material from that breach relating to the FSB’s news monitoring system. The system was called PAUK — Russian for “SPIDER.”
Bluesky Says Kremlin Is Hacking Its Platform to Spread Propaganda
The company said it was fighting Russian efforts to hijack real users’ accounts to post fake content, an apparently novel tactic.
A well-funded Moscow-based global ‘news’ network has infected Western artificial intelligence tools worldwide with Russian propaganda
An audit found that the 10 leading generative AI tools advanced Moscow’s disinformation goals by repeating false claims from the pro-Kremlin Pravda network 33 percent of the time
Investigation | An old dog with no new tricks: Matryoshka targets regional elections in Germany
ISD finds Matryoshka targets Germany’s 2026 elections, exposing weaknesses that could aid detection in future elections.
Russia’s FPV drone campaign in Ukraine institutionalizes intentional civilian harm as a tool of war
Russia's use of FPV drones to strike civilian targets in Ukraine indicates a culture seeking to weaponize civilian harm as a tool of war.
Fascintern Media
We are facing a coordinated international fascist movement that works with explicit backing from Moscow, Washington, and tech monopolies, and is propagating itself through its own media apparatus. Yet people who claim to side with democracy keep doing work to support Fascintern media because they misunderstand how it works. This needs to change.
