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A Russian disinformation network has launched a fake news campaign spreading a creative take on Trump’s recently announced tariffs. As the Bot Blocker (@antibot4navalny) project has shared with The Insider, the purported reason the American president imposed trade duties on the uninhabited Australian territory of the Heard and McDonald Islands — home only to penguins and other forms of wildlife — stands out as implausible even among the Kremlin’s long list of absurd falsehoods past.
Russian-linked accounts on Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram are circulating claims that seven Ukrainian oligarchs registered offshore firms on the islands, then funneled over €30 billion (more than $32 billion) in U.S. military aid into their accounts there. The islands, uninhabited and among the most isolated places on Earth, have no legal addresses or infrastructure, making company registration there effectively impossible.
“Penguin” disinfo in “print” and on video
The disinformation is presented in the form of articles and front pages mimicking well-known Western media outlets such as USA Today and the French daily La Croix — though no such covers “reporting” the offshore story exist.
“Heard Island and McDonald Islands have come under Trump’s ire due to the fact that seven Ukrainian oligarchs, involved in the plundering of £25.5bn of U.S. aid, have companies registered on them,” read one of the fake covers, posing as the Hull Daily Mail — a regional newspaper for Kingston upon Hull in northeast England.
A video version of the fake, featuring the same claims and a counterfeit Wall Street Journal logo, is circulating in Russian pro-war Telegram channels, including Ya Chetko Patriotka 🇷🇺 (“I’m Definitely a Patriot”) and Odesa Za Pobedu! ⚓️ (“Odesa For Victory,” with the «Z» symbolizing support for Russia’s invasion). The video does not appear on the official WSJ website or social media and is clearly fabricated — the real WSJ logo is white, while the fake uses a gray-brown version.
The network behind the campaign
The content is being distributed by a network of largely inactive accounts, many of which appear to be years old and have likely been stolen (particularly on X). These posts are boosted by hundreds of other accounts known to repost paid content — from electric scooter ads to Chinese propaganda. Evidence suggests that the operation is part of the Matryoshka disinformation campaign, which French intelligence has linked to Russia.
Falsehoods being spread in the current Matryoshka wave:
- “Ukrainian billionaires registered companies on uninhabited islands to steal U.S. military aid”
- “Ukrainian Armed Forces deputy commander called for the removal of Trump after tariff announcement”
- “Ukraine’s economy minister called Trump’s new tariffs a display of incompetence by him and his aides”
The Elon Musk effect
Matryoshka accounts are often short-lived and quickly banned, but sometimes the campaigns gain traction. In early February, Elon Musk, whose account on X has 218.7 million followers, reposted a Matryoshka fake claiming the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was using taxpayer money to fly global celebrities like Ben Stiller and Sean Penn to Ukraine in support of President Zelensky.
Thanks to Musk’s repost, the video garnered 13 million views, making it the most viral Kremlin-backed disinformation push to date. The celebrities had to personally debunk the false claims.
Who's behind Matryoshka?
The disinformation campaign known as “Matryoshka” began no later than September 2023 and was first identified by the Bot Blocker project. The bots typically share videos discrediting Ukraine and Ukrainians and are marked with logos of established and trusted media outlets in order to make them look authentic.
In one campaign, videos showed prominent scientists “convincing” Western audiences that Ukraine should surrender to Russia. The voices of the real scientists were cloned using AI, the University of Bristol confirmed to The Insider — as one of its professors had been featured in the fake clips.
European intelligence agencies believe Russia is behind this campaign. The French government agency Viginum found that such content is usually first published by major Russian-language Telegram channels. The agency’s semantic analysis of Russian posts revealed a high rate of copy-pasting and a noticeable increase in fake content beginning in September 2023.