“Matryoshka”, the well-known pro-Kremlin bot network, has launched a disinformation campaign targeting the parliamentary elections next month in Budapest, different from those in other countries, such as the Republic of Moldova, where Moscow has tried to influence the vote.
In the middle of March, a professionally made video, distributed on the X platform and falsely attributed to a media outlet from the Republic of Moldova, claimed that the Hungarians were urged “to take up arms, resist the authorities, and kill Viktor Orbán”.
Another fake video clip, marked with the logo of the Ukrainian platform United24, claims that a high-ranking Ukrainian official has called for armed violence for the “liberation of Hungary through bloodshed.”
Both are part of an extremely well-targeted and unusually inflammatory campaign, linked to the Kremlin, ahead of the vote in Hungary, according to the conclusions offered to the publication “Politico” by “Antibot4Navalny”, a group that monitors Russian influence operations. The clips appeared just a few days after the “Washington Post” reported that Russian intelligence services would have analyzed the possibility of organizing an assassination attempt on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to increase his chances of re-election.
Behind the campaign is the Russian bot network “Matryoshka”, which used to react to news, but did not anticipate them. According to “Antibot4Navalny”, the network is adopting a different approach this time, setting the narrative, not just amplifying an existing one. Since the launch of the campaign for Hungary, the network has published up to ten videos a day. However, “Antibot4Navalny” asserts that the Hungarian elections represent the first situation in which Russian disinformation explicitly promotes scenarios of a deadly attack on a candidate or a military coup.
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