The Kremlin’s Matryoshka bot network has launched its first known campaign targeting Sweden, spreading videos on X disguised as content from well-known international media outlets. The videos spread disinformation about Swedish politicians’ alleged ties to paedophiles and financial criminals, claims of planned election fraud, and attacks on opposition leaders. Alongside Swedish politicians, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has also been targeted. The information was shared with The Insider by the Antibot4Navalny project.
One video uses Der Spiegel branding to claim that the Greek government froze the financial operations of more than 500 companies linked to Merz and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. The entities were allegedly involved in laundering proceeds from drug trafficking and financed a paedophile network known as “04/09.” This likely refers to Operation Fever, a Polish police initiative that saw a network of more than a hundred criminals arrested across 12 countries on April 9, 2025. Matryoshka’s video also invokes the former head of Poland’s Military Counterintelligence Service, Radosław Kujawa, who allegedly described the events as “a victory for the Swedish and German opposition.”
Another video, circulated with the caption “Sweden’s ruling coalition uses the same tactics against its political opponents as Germany’s CDU party,” uses the logo of Swedish broadcaster SVT. The video claims that Landa, a lobbying organization linked to the CDU, was spreading disinformation to discredit Swedish opposition figures.
Another clip, which mimics Euronews content, claims that German hackers broke into Sweden’s BankID identification system to influence the elections.
Sweden’s Riksdag elections are scheduled for Sept. 13. The elected members of parliament will then choose a new prime minister. The ruling coalition — comprising the Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats, the Liberals, and the Sweden Democrats — faces a left-wing coalition of Social Democrats, the Left Party, the Greens, and the Centre Party. Polls show the left-wing coalition leading by around 10 percentage points (53.9% to 43.9%), making a change of government highly likely.
Several regional and local elections in Germany are also taking place in September. As The Insider reported earlier, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) issued an official warning about a Russian-led disinformation campaign. According to the agency, this month Matryoshka bots spread posts on X using the hashtag #TimeToDivideGermany, promoting the idea of re-dividing Germany into East and West while calling such a division a “historical necessity.”
