Russia’s ‘Matryoshka’ Botnet Launches Disinformation Blitz Against Zelensky Ahead of Istanbul Talks

A Kremlin-linked disinformation network known as “Matryoshka” has intensified efforts to undermine Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky by spreading fabricated news and fake social media trends ahead of proposed peace talks in Istanbul. The campaign, exposed by investigators from the Bot Blocker Project and reported by The Insider, reveals the scale and sophistication of Russia’s ongoing hybrid war.

At the center of the operation is a series of fake news articles, designed to mimic the appearance of well-known Western publications. These articles falsely portray Zelensky as desperate for negotiations and humiliated by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s refusal to attend the upcoming talks personally. Headlines include lines like “Zelensky is ready to beg Putin to stop Russian forces” and “Putin has nothing to talk about with the liar in Istanbul”—language calibrated to humiliate the Ukrainian leader while reinforcing Kremlin propaganda.

This latest surge in disinformation follows the Kremlin’s announcement that Vladimir Medinsky, head of Russia’s Writers’ Union and a longtime propagandist, would lead Moscow’s delegation in Istanbul, rather than Putin himself. In the aftermath of that announcement, hundreds of coordinated bot accounts began flooding platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and BlueSky with identical narratives accusing Zelensky of failure and weakness. The bot posts on X have received significant interaction—though almost entirely from other accounts within the same network—while the campaign has failed to gain traction on platforms like BlueSky.

In one particularly bizarre element of the campaign, the botnet distributed a video claiming that the hashtag #putiniwantpersonalmeeting was trending on Polish TikTok, supposedly featuring users mocking Zelensky. Investigators reviewed TikTok and found no such trend or related content. The video was entirely fabricated—part of a broader effort to engineer artificial “public opinion” against Ukraine and push it into Western discourse.

This strategy is not new. The Matryoshka botnet has been active since at least September 2023. Its hallmarks include creating fake news and then encouraging real journalists and fact-checkers to verify it, thus boosting its visibility. The network routinely uses hacked accounts and recycled content, doctoring images and videos to make Ukrainians look weak, corrupt, or extreme. These materials are often labeled with fake logos of trusted news outlets to deceive audiences into thinking they are legitimate.

Analysts have noted that the Matryoshka campaign bears striking similarities to a previous Russian operation known as “Reliable Russian News” (RRN), or the Doppelgänger network, which was uncovered in 2023. That operation was also tied to the GRU (Russia’s military intelligence agency) and the Russian Ministry of Defense, suggesting the same agencies may be behind the current effort.