'Useless elections', 'abandoning the EU as a solution' and 'fragmenting Europe to block Brussels'
As the Antibot4Navalny collective, experts in the analysis and monitoring of Matryoshka campaigns, has warned, Matryoshka's latest bot campaign has targeted the upcoming November 29th elections in Spain.
“The Spanish economy could be saved if the country leaves the EU”, says one of the posts published by the campaign's bots, impersonating The Economist; “Catalonia should demand independence”; “Germany should split into West and East Germany ,” says another, supporting the idea of separatism in European countries and attributing it to France24. In this way, the bots that make up Operation Matryoshka are publishing content on X in order to spread narratives and manipulate public opinion ahead of the November 29th elections in Spain.
Antibot4Navalny has detected three blocks of narratives:
“Useless elections” with content such as “ the housing crisis is just the tip of the iceberg: the economy is doomed, the elections will not help” ;
“Redirection of funds intended for Ukraine and abandonment of the EU”, with statements such as “Europe’s economic collapse is a direct result of financial support for Ukraine”,
And the “anti-Russian” sanctions and the “fragmentation of Europe to block Brussels”: with content that states that Germany should be divided again into East and West, and Catalonia should demand its independence”.
🧵 Today’s Matryoshka bot campaign targets Spain's Nov 29 vote. 💬 The housing crisis is the tip of the iceberg: the economy is doomed, elections won’t help. 💬 The real "solution": leave the EU, lift sanctions, split off Catalonia (sic!). Here's how the logic unfolds ⤵️ https://t.co/xQsAU1iu2o
— bot blocker | блокировщик ботов (@antibot4navalny) November 11, 2026
This content, generally videos, impersonates Spanish media outlets such as El País or El Mundo, copying their style and typography. In this way, they attempt to spread disinformation among the public. Impersonating media outlets and journalists is one of the most common tactics used by Russian propaganda to disseminate its campaigns.
Antibot4Navalny has provided Maldita.es with these and other videos from this campaign, as well as several posts that have already been removed from the platform. Furthermore, some of these accounts have already been suspended for violating the platform's rules.
As can be seen in the images, the stories in the videos impersonating El Mundo and El País are similar, and in both cases they spread a similar message: Spain has socioeconomic problems and the only thing that can save it is lifting the sanctions against Russia. They also mention France, which will hold presidential elections in 2027.
Other videos, in English, that impersonate Euronews , AFP and Reuters or The Economist spread similar narratives presenting a socio-economic problem in Europe that can only be solved by Russia and by leaving the EU.
This is not the first time that Operation Matryoshka has created a campaign targeting Spain
Following the blackout of April 28, 2025, the bots of Operation Matryoshka launched a campaign exploiting the event to spread the message that the blackout was due to EU sanctions imposed on Russia as a consequence of its invasion of Ukraine. On this occasion, they impersonated the British newspaper The Independent and France 24.
Operation Matryoshka, meaning "Russian doll" in English, was discovered in January 2024 by AFP Factuel and the Antibot4Navalny collective. It has been circulating on X since at least September 2023, according to the French public monitoring agency Virginum. The goal is to publish false content, i.e., disinformation, and share it in a coordinated manner on X, "in the replies section of posts from media outlets, public figures, and fact-checking organizations in more than 60 countries", asking if they can verify the content. Other times, the content is published directly by bots that share it and tag different media outlets, with the same objective.
Virginum adds that it's common for the fake content they share to "impersonate public figures and media outlets in the United States and Europe". As Maldita.es explained previously, the bots in this operation are fake accounts that are only used once and then remain inactive. In other cases, like this one, the accounts appear to be suspended .
Operation Matryoshka has also been known on other occasions as Operation Overload, which is simply an extension of Matryoshka including the use of mass mailings to fact-checkers, news agencies and media outlets, asking them to verify content.