Russia’s Channel One airs fake front pages spread by Matryoshka bot network for the first time

According to reports by analysts at the Bot Blocker project (@antibot4navalny), which monitors Russian bot and disinformation activity online, a full set of fake covers was first published by a network of accounts linked to the “Matryoshka” operation. Accounts on X (formerly Twitter), whose ties to the network have been documented, posted three covers at once. The images were spread through old or compromised accounts with artificially inflated view and repost counts and little to no genuine engagement. The images were then sent to media outlets and fact-checkers and were also reposted on TikTok.

Bot Blocker told The Insider that this is one of the first cases in which visual materials created as part of the Matryoshka operation were used so visibly on Russia’s largest state television channel. The project said it established that the distribution followed a pre-prepared chain of accounts that:

• receive no replies,
  
  
• show artificially inflated views, likes and reposts,
  
  
• are often old, abandoned, and likely hacked accounts,
  
  
• publish and repost content in sync on the same days,
  
  
• send links to fakes to fact-checkers by email in batches.
  
  

This coordinated chain is used to amplify fake covers through Twitter and Telegram before they reach federal television. Before the Channel One broadcast, the fake covers appeared on Jan. 28 in the Telegram channel “Voyenny Obozrevatel” (lit. “Military Observer”) with one posted around 2 p.m. and another around 3:05 p.m. Moscow time. Later they began circulating as a bundle that also included a fake cover of La Tribune. Some of the earliest posts of this kind appeared in the channels “Voyenny Obozrevatel,” and “Odessa Za Pobedu!” (with the “Z” symbolizing support for Russia’s invasion).

“The source is already producing five to 10 fake videos a day, as well as covers, graffiti, and more,” Bot Blocker told The Insider. “If TV broadcasts start picking up that volume of ‘creative’ work, propaganda will move to another level in creating an alternative reality, first inside the country, and soon in pro-Kremlin information bubbles abroad, like that network of Telegram channels aimed at Germany.”