A video showed tourists in Times Square looking up at an electronic billboard carrying a message about Vice President Kamala Harris. The billboard did not exist. It falsely said Harris was offering free gender reassignment surgery for children.
Matryoshka distributed the video after Joe Biden withdrew and Harris became the Democratic nominee. It first appeared on Telegram, then surpassed 100,000 views on X within four hours.
The clip reflects the mechanics of Russian-linked election disinformation: content made to look convincing, spread rapidly across social media and directed at political fault lines. Classified US intelligence assessments in recent months say the Kremlin authorised social-media content intended to inflame political tensions in the United States.
Putin has pursued covert information operations against the United States in every election cycle since at least the 2016 campaign. Russian operatives have relied on bots, trolls, sham news websites and manipulated videos to create disorder, deepen divisions and support candidates seen as favourable to Moscow.
Advertisement
Since 2016, the methods have taken in artificial intelligence, deepfakes and continuing changes to fit platform algorithms. Researchers have attributed some of the fakes to an operation called Storm-1679, or Matryoshka; Matryoshka, Storm-1516 and Doppelganger are among the Kremlin-linked operations identified in such campaigns.
One fabricated video used Sarah Jessica Parker’s image and made her appear to say: 'When I hear about Democrats, I immediately think of corrupt Nazi whores. If you love America, never vote for Democrats.'
The clips carried a counterfeit CNN logo and the hashtag #AllDemocratsAreCriminals.
Storm-1516 also worked to influence the 2024 election through false videos. One video claimed to show Harris supporters attacking a Trump rally attendee and drew millions of views.
John Mark Dougan, a former Florida police officer, fled to Russia after he was indicted for extortion and wiretapping. He established scores of fake websites posing as American news outlets. His network was the most consequential disinformation effort linked to Storm-1516.
Another deepfake falsely alleged that the Democratic National Committee paid CNN’s chief executive, Mark Thompson, $259 million to promote gender transition among children. It adopted the appearance of Mother Jones.
It presented Mother Jones editor-in-chief Clara Jeffery as praising a supposed Anonymous hack as a 'great gift' that exposes the moral decay of Democrats and their media allies. The video was an impersonation and its claims were false.
Matryoshka uses AI to produce fake videos, at times dozens in a day, while impersonating journalists and news organisations including the BBC.
BBC Verify exposed a separate operation run by a former US police officer based in Russia, which created hundreds of false local-news websites in the UK, US, France and other Western countries. One, called the London Crier, published a false claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky bought a mansion owned by King Charles, accompanied by an AI-narrated video on YouTube.
The same technology can be used against private citizens. Aaron, a 999 call operator in Preston, had his voice cloned with AI for a fake video concerning the 2025 Polish presidential election.
Researchers have found related AI-made tactics used in elections in Germany, Hungary and Armenia. Experts describe the current operation as the first salvo in Russia’s targeting of the November vote.
The scale of earlier efforts gives an indication of the reach available to such operations. Russia-backed content reached as many as 126 million Americans on Facebook during and after the 2016 presidential election.
US intelligence agencies have found no evidence of attempts to interfere with voting equipment in a way that would jeopardise the voting process itself. The immediate struggle concerns the material voters encounter, trust and circulate before casting their ballots.
Advertisement
Comments (0)