---
title: Matryoshka's midterm clips:borrowed faces and a borrowed logo
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/matryoshka-midterm-clips/
description: a bot network that researchers attribute to the Russia-aligned Matryoshka operation recut real celebrity videos with cloned voices and a stolen CNN logo…
section: Case studies
---

![Illustration: a contemporary investigator's evidence wall of printed social-media posts, network diagrams and a pinned world map, in the same dossier style as the rest of the archive.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-contemporary-evidence-wall.jpg)

[Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/)

# Matryoshka's midterm clips:borrowed faces and a borrowed logo

- **When:** September 11, 2026
- **Actor:** Russia-aligned Matryoshka / Operation Overload / Storm-1679 network
- **Target:** U.S. midterm voters and named Democratic candidates; newsrooms and fact-checkers as a secondary audience
- **Source:** Impersonated Source falsified: fake personas, outlets or documents
- **Confidence:** **high** Multiple independent open sources, low disagreement about the facts
- **Techniques:** [Synthetic media](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/synthetic-media/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/) [Firehosing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/) [Accusation in a mirror](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/accusation-in-a-mirror/)
- **Regime:** [Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/putin-government/)

On this page

> **Content note.** This case describes videos that put slurs and criminal accusations in the mouths of real actors and aimed them at named U.S. politicians. The accusations are the operators' words, not findings, and not the words of the actors shown.

**In one line:** a bot network that researchers attribute to the Russia-aligned Matryoshka operation recut real celebrity videos with cloned voices and a stolen CNN logo to smear named U.S. Democrats, and tagged fact-checkers so that warnings about the clips would carry them further.

![Diagram: real footage is recut with cloned audio and a CNN logo, posted by bot accounts under a hashtag, then pushed at newsrooms so a debunk becomes distribution](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/matryoshka-midterm-clips-diagram.svg)

## What happened

- **12 August 2026.** Germany's domestic intelligence service (BfV) names MATRYOSHKA as a campaign of English-language short videos that steal German news mastheads and smear state and local politicians before the September ballots. ISD later counts 269 X posts across 21 sampled days; CeMAS logs 141 election-related videos between 30 June and 28 August.
- **11 September 2026.** The anti-Kremlin researcher account antibot4navalny flags a new batch on X impersonating CNN and naming midterm Democrats including Chris Pappas, James Talarico, Jon Ossoff, Mary Peltola, Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown, followed by a second slate. An earlier U.S. run used the hashtag #AllDemocratsAreCriminals.
- **Same day.** Brandy Zadrozny at MS NOW reports the celebrity layer: a Sarah Jessica Parker Cameo video with cloned audio attacking Democrats in slurs; a Julia Roberts clip lifted from Gucci's 2023 Chime for Change campaign and recut into a claim about Democrats and drug companies; clips of Emma Caulfield, Christopher Lloyd and Ed Begley Jr. used the same way. None of these people said the lines.
- **Reach.** Bluesky suspended seven accounts. According to Zadrozny, X had not acted on the copies she saw, and the most-seen posts had interactions in the dozens.

## How it works

- [Synthetic media](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/synthetic-media/): real faces, cloned audio, and cutaways to stock footage. The production line is the technique; the political message is interchangeable.
- [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/): the CNN logo and the famous face lend credibility the clip has not earned. Neither is a real correspondent or a real endorsement.
- [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/) and [Outrage bait](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/outrage-bait/): a hashtag that sorts a whole party as criminals, and clips built to make the viewer angry enough to share before checking.
- [Firehosing](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/firehosing/): many clips, many names, several platforms, and little consistency between them. The pattern fits firehosing: volume that wears out the people who check rather than winning one argument.
- [Accusation in a mirror](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/accusation-in-a-mirror/): the network has a documented habit of sending its own fakes to fact-checkers, so that a newsroom's warning repeats the clip and looks like confirmation that the story is live.

## Then and now

![Beat Back the Hun with Liberty Bonds (1918)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/beat-back-the-hun-1918.jpg)

*[Beat Back the Hun with Liberty Bonds](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/beat-back-the-hun-1918/), U.S. Treasury Liberty Loan campaign, 1918. Public domain.*

In 1918 a single label, "the Hun", did the work of an argument about Germany. In 2026 a hashtag does the same job for a U.S. party. The poster needed a printing press and an artist; the clips need a Cameo subscription and a voice-cloning tool. What's the same is that the label comes before any evidence and invites the viewer to reject the target without weighing any.

![FBI seizure banner placed on 32 domains used by the Russian Doppelganger campaign, 2024](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/fbi-doppelganger-seizure-banner-2024.png)

*FBI seizure banner, 2024, placed on 32 domains of the Russian "Doppelganger" operation, which cloned the look of Western news sites. U.S. government work, public domain. Doppelganger is a separate, related operation. It is shown here because it used the same stolen-masthead technique, not because it is the same network.*

## Positions on the record

- The attribution to MATRYOSHKA / Operation Overload rests on method continuity (Cameo faces, AI voiceovers, stolen mastheads, mass-tagging of newsrooms) documented by BfV, ISD, CeMAS and antibot4navalny. The brief rates it **high**, not documented: BfV named the German wave, and it is researchers who treat the U.S. batch as the same operation.
- Every source agrees that reach was small. This case documents a method, not an effect on any vote.

## Same-method test

A factory that pasted Republican candidates' names onto recut celebrity clips under a fake CNN logo and a hashtag calling all Republicans criminals would be the same case. The technique ids do not change with the party on the thumbnail.

## How to spot it

- If a celebrity seems to endorse a political smear in a selfie video, look for the original Cameo or brand campaign before sharing.
- A news logo on a vertical clip with no correspondent and no link to the outlet's own site is a costume.
- Don't quote the cloned line as the actor's view, and don't let a fact-check thumbnail that repeats the clip become the distribution the operator wanted.

## Images

| Image | Source | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Mechanism diagram (above) | Drawn for FRAME from the brief's sourced facts (`make_diagrams.py`) | CC BY 4.0, FRAME |
| *Beat Back the Hun with Liberty Bonds* (1918) | FRAME gallery, from Wikimedia Commons (Library of Congress) | Public domain |
| FBI Doppelganger seizure banner (2024) | [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doppelganger_banner.png) | Public domain (U.S. government work) |

### Image gaps

- **Frames from the Matryoshka clips themselves.** Not included: they are built from copyrighted Cameo videos, a Gucci campaign and CNN's trademarked branding, and they carry defamatory claims about real people. Researchers' posts (antibot4navalny, MS NOW) show them.
- **BfV, ISD or CeMAS charts of the German wave.** Not included: German federal agency notices are not automatically in the public domain, and ISD and CeMAS publish under their own copyright.

## Sources

- [MS NOW / Brandy Zadrozny, 11 September 2026](https://www.ms.now/news/russia-election-influencing-campaign-targeting-democrats)
- [antibot4navalny on X, 11 September 2026: fake-CNN batch](https://x.com/antibot4navalny/status/2098456226430689520)
- [antibot4navalny on X: first U.S. midterm Cameo batch](https://x.com/antibot4navalny/status/2098196180287332413)
- [BfV short notice, 12 August 2026](https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/SharedDocs/kurzmeldungen/DE/2026/2026-08-12-auslaendische-einflussnahme.html)
- [ISD investigation, 4 September 2026](https://www.isdglobal.org/digital-dispatch/investigation-an-old-dog-with-no-new-tricks-matryoshka-targets-regional-elections-in-germany/)
- [CeMAS log of Operation Overload election videos](https://cemas.io/blog/desinformation-vor-landtagswahlen)
- [ISD 2025 dispatch: Operation Overload method baseline](https://www.isdglobal.org/digital-dispatch/operation-overloads-underwhelming-influence-and-evolving-tactics/)
- Watch brief: [Matryoshka recycles Cameo celebrity clips and fake CNN brands to smear named U.S. Democrats as its first documented midterm batch.](https://propagandaarchive.org/briefs/20260911-2300Z-matryoshka-us-midterms/). Campaign dossier: [Operation Matryoshka / Overload — German state elections 2026](https://propagandaarchive.org/campaigns/matryoshka-germany-2026/).