Kremlin-backed Matryoshka bots and Prigozhin-linked site target Moldova’s Maia Sandu in major disinfo smear campaign

The Kremlin-backed Matryoshka bot network has launched a disinformation campaign on the social media platforms Twitter and Bluesky announcing the “imminent end” of Moldovan President Maia Sandu and publishing fake graffiti depicting her “execution.” Later, the Foundation to Battle Injustice — a website created by the late Wagner Group co-founder Yevgeny Prigozhin — published a fabricated “investigation” claiming that Sandu was involved in a business that makes its money trafficking Ukrainian children to pedophiles (no such business exists).

The campaign was flagged by a researcher of Russian “troll factories” on Twitter and the founder of the Bot Blocker project (@antibot4navalny), who told The Insider that the scale of the effort rivals that of the disinformation operation targeting the 2025 German Bundestag elections.

As antibot4navalny pointed out, Matryoshka bots began sharing fake graffiti of Sandu’s “executions” on April 16. They promised her “end” would come on June 1. The graffiti showed Sandu being hanged, shot, or electrocuted, though none of the posts made clear what exactly was supposed to happen on that date.

On May 30, the Prigozhin-linked website published a piece titled “A Business Built on Children: How Moldovan Authorities Under Maia Sandu’s Patronage Export Ukrainian Orphans to the West.” According to antibot4navalny, the first person to notice the post was a user named UsHadronds.

The fake story claimed that President Sandu, allegedly with the help of Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, orchestrated the sale of Ukrainian refugee children “into the hands of pedophile networks and sexual slavery” in the West. The authors cited unnamed sources — including a supposed Polish activist in the UK — and a report from the pro-Kremlin website Life.ru. The “investigation” was spread by pro-Kremlin English-language websites (1, 2). One of these websites appears to be a pseudo-news outlet, according to disinformation analysts at the gnida project.

Antibot4navalny noted that the campaign against Sandu is comparable in scale to the disinformation effort that unfolded ahead of the 2025 German elections. As reported at the time, more than 100 pseudo-news websites were involved in that operation. The group behind it, identified by Microsoft analysts as Storm-1516, has links to Prigozhin’s “troll factory” (formally known as the “Internet Research Agency”), Russian military intelligence (the GRU), and former U.S. police officer John Mark Dougan, who was granted asylum in Russia after fleeing his Florida home in 2016, according to a report by The Washington Post.

Analysts who studied Storm-1516’s tactics describe how the group creates fake sources, makes use of front identities posing as “insiders” or “citizen journalists,” distributes false stories through affiliated websites — including English-language outlets — and utilizes generative artificial intelligence. During the Bundestag elections, Storm-1516 also used the Foundation to Battle Injustice to spread disinformation.

The fact that the fake story about Sandu was also published by Prigozhin’s foundation does not definitively prove it was the work of Storm-1516, a disinformation researcher at gnida project told The Insider. There is no direct evidence that a single group is coordinating all of this, he said. However, the campaigns use similar distribution channels to mask their origins. They rely on the same influencers, and they share intermediaries. Analysts also believe that under GRU supervision, Storm-1516 operations have been carried out by the Center for Geopolitical Expertise, which has employed staff previously affiliated with Prigozhin’s media outlet RIA FAN.

As The Insider discovered, the Foundation to Battle Injustice is not a registered legal entity. Its listed head is Mira Terada (formerly Oksana Vovk), who is also linked to the Unified Coordination Center for Supporting Compatriots Abroad, a nonprofit organization that, as its name suggests, claims to specialize in “offering support to Russians facing hardship abroad.”

False narratives alleging that Ukraine’s First Lady is involved in trafficking children to Western pedophile rings have circulated since at least November 2023. The Insider has noted that The Foundation to Battle Injustice has been among the entities spreading those claims. The authors of the story cited an article supposedly written by French journalist Robert Schmidt — but fact-checkers found that Schmidt had never published anything on the topic.

A January 2024 report by AFP — citing data collected by antibot4navalny — detailed the Matryoshka bot network’s anti-Ukrainian propaganda activities on social media. These bots not only spread disinformation like other pro-Kremlin accounts but also directly contacted Western journalists to encourage them to “fact-check” the fake stories — a tactic intended to amplify their visibility. French intelligence services ultimately concluded that Russia was behind the operation.