Kremlin bots pose as Latvians en masse, demanding return of licenses to hockey players who took part in Russian tournament

The tweets are accompanied by hashtags such as #NoPoliticsInSport, #FairSport, #westandwithBalticSelect, and others. According to antibot4navalny analysts, by the morning of February 24, these messages had been retweeted more than 160,000 times. The number of impressions stood at 617,000. The analyst managed to find about 160 “second-level” accounts, which publish content distributed by “first-level” accounts.

The analysts noted that this is the first case since October 2023 in which the bot network publishes content that is not in the Russian, Ukrainian, English, German, French or Hebrew languages.

This is a large-scale information campaign, according to the founder of antibot4navalny. He says it is highly likely that the accounts posting and retweeting these messages belong to the pro-Kremlin Doppelgänger / RRN bot network, which The Insider reported on in 2023 (1, 2, 3).

The network is controlled by the Russian IT companies National Technologies and Social Design Agency (Агентство Социального Проектирования), which are under EU sanctions. The ultimate owner of National Technologies is Rostec — Russia’s state-owned defense conglomerate headed by former KGB agent Sergey Chemezov, a close friend of Vladimir Putin.

A register compiled by Meta, Facebook’s parent company, previously identified fake websites mimicking Western media outlets. These sites were created by Doppelgänger publish links to their articles for the purpose of spreading disinformation. The only website for Latvia on the register was Delfi. One domain was registered in June 2022 (delfi.life), while the other two (delfi.today and delfi.top) were registered in July of the same year. They were blocked in a matter of days.