The Russian-linked Matryoshka bot network has launched a new campaign aimed at influencing the U.S. midterm elections.
Researchers with the Antibot4Navalny project, which tracks pro-Russian bot activity on social media, provided The Insider with information about 16 videos that have recently been posted on social media. In the clips, various “celebrities” appear in videos bearing the CNN logo — calling Democrats “pedophiles” and “criminals” and urging viewers not to vote for the party’s candidates in House and Senate elections on Nov. 3.
On Sept. 11 and 12, at least eight posts appeared on X, each containing two videos featuring well-known Americans who supposedly “explain” why users should not vote for the Democratic Party. The videos use footage of celebrities including Alyson Hannigan, Eric Roberts, Jeri Ryan, Ed Begley Jr., Sarah Jessica Parker, Lea Thompson, Melora Hardin, Christopher Lloyd, Julia Roberts, and multiple others. All of the videos display the logo of CNN, and the clips also carry the hashtags #midterms2026 and #AllDemocratsAreCriminals.
In the videos, the celebrities are shown accusing members of the Democratic Party of using children “for their own purposes,” supporting “the Zelensky regime,” popularizing the “rejection of family and faith,” promoting hormone therapy, and engaging in corruption.
Some clips also attack individual Democratic candidates. Roy Cooper, for example, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina, is accused of “calling for letting another 12 to 15 million immigrants into the U.S. if Americans want to have cheap groceries in stores.”
Most of the videos follow the same formula: celebrities purportedly claim to have “learned something” about the Democrats that is so disturbing they can no longer bring themselves to vote for the party. Every video ends with a call to share the clip and not support Democratic candidates in the upcoming elections.
The Insider has obtained links to the original posts from AntiBot4Navalny confirming that the accounts that shared them belong to the Matryoshka network. The newsroom is not publishing direct links to the posts to avoid helping spread the disinformation.
Current polling suggests Democrats have a strong chance of winning control of the House, while races for Senate seats are more competitive. Amid declining support for the Republican Party, Donald Trump even promised to pay every adult American $5,000 if Republicans retain control of both the House and Senate.
What is Matryoshka?
Antibot4Navalny’s researchers coined the name Matryoshka to describe a Russian operation that produces and spreads fake stories through a coordinated infrastructure of bots, trolls, and anonymous platforms. Its aim is to create artificial information “noise” and manipulate perceptions of events both inside Russia and abroad. The Antibot4Navalny project named the operation after the eponymous Russian nesting doll — the bots hide behind one another, and disinformation is spread in layers across different platforms, making the source harder to identify.
The mechanism works in two ways. First, it creates large numbers of fake profiles posing as ordinary people, independent media outlets, or think tanks. These accounts generate dozens of posts a day, imitating local styles of speech. Second, identical content is launched simultaneously across multiple social media platforms at the same time. In order to appear convincing, the bots use the logos of well-known Western media outlets and human rights groups.
