Fake news videos are spread in an influence campaign against Swedish elections

The video clips, which have been shared with SVT by the analysis group, are produced as news videos from established media houses. For example, two of the video clips are marked with SVT's and Dagens Nyheter's logos. Two other clips have hijacked the graphic profiles of Euronews and Der Spiegel. But the videos are fabricated and have never been published by the media.

Matryoshka is mainly active on X. A previous review by SVT showed that the majority of the network's posts contained messages aimed at influencing Western countries' support for Ukraine.

German intelligence warns

The German intelligence service BfV has warned that the campaign targets local and regional elections to be held in the country in September. French government agency Viginum, which works against foreign information influence, has also discovered a Matrjojska operation that targeted presidential candidate Gabriel Attal. France will hold presidential elections in 2027.

The fake posts rarely get widespread and typically do not collect more than a few hundred or a thousand genuine views, writes Antibot4navalny to SVT.

Other purposes

According to analysts, the campaign is not primarily designed to reach a large audience directly on social media.

In the posts directed at the Swedish election, several news media's social media accounts have been tagged, including SVT's and Dagens Nyheters.

According to a report by Viginum, operators are actively spreading the fake posts to journalists and fact-checkers, often disguised as verification questions. The scheme suggests that the campaign aims to distract and overload newsrooms' fact-checking resources through large volumes of targeted requests.