The Kremlin bot farm has gone to the rapidly gaining popularity social network Bluesky

This is the Kremlin's first attempt to manipulate the opinions of Bluesky users, not counting the active accounts of Russian propaganda media (e.g., RT) on the platform, the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security reports .

As a representative of the Bot Blocker said , experts are currently aware of only four posts on this social network published by Kremlin bots, and they consider this to be a "first experiment."

When publishing fake videos, bots in Bluesky behave in the same way as the "Matryoshka" accounts in X. That is, they tag independent publications, journalists, and fact-checkers in the post with a request to verify the veracity of the video.

For example, in one of them, a girl, introduced as an employee of the Center for Climate Concern at Imperial College London, criticizes the decision of European leaders to allow Ukraine to strike Russia with long-range missiles.

Bellingcat founder Elliot Higgins notes that the video was based on a real video of a college employee in which she spoke about the connection between health and climate.

In another fake video, a graduate of the University of Warwick (Great Britain) is attributed with the words that Russia is right and Ukraine is not a victim. The original of this video, as Higgins writes , was previously posted on the university's Facebook page. And in it, the woman spoke about the external differences between people.

The original sources of the other videos are unknown. In one of them, a student from the University of York allegedly talks about human rights violations and dictatorship in Ukraine. In the second, a student from the University of Sunderland (Great Britain) allegedly calls for the lifting of sanctions against Russia.

It seems that Bluesky will soon have to find effective means to counter Russian "matryoshka dolls." Otherwise, the platform risks turning into a breeding ground for Russian propaganda.

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