The pro-Kremlin bot network known as “Matryoshka” has launched a new disinformation campaign aimed at inciting conflict between Moldovan President Maia Sandu and European Commission Vice President Kaja Kallas. The campaign, which has published social media posts on multiple platforms, claims Sandu is allegedly seeking to replace Kallas. These details were shared with The Insider by a researcher from the Twitter/X-based watchdog project Bot Blocker (@antibotfornavalny), which investigates Russian “troll farms.”
The first pair of videos focused on Sandu and Kallas had appeared by May 28, but it was not until June 19 that the bots began spreading the content en masse. All of the videos are disguised as content from prominent European media outlets such as Deutsche Welle (DW), Der Spiegel, Euronews, and Business Insider. In them, Sandu is falsely portrayed as scheming to unseat Kallas from her position within the European Commission. One such video, posing as a DW production, claims that the information was sourced from figures close to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who is presented as the initiator of the supposed leadership shake-up.
Viewers are told that von der Leyen sees Sandu as “the better candidate because of her passivity and inability to engage in political battles” — unlike Kallas, who is said to pose a threat to von der Leyen’s authority. Sandu is described in the video as “a puppet bureaucrat for Ursula von der Leyen.”