MS NOW reports Matryoshka (Storm-1679) campaign of CNN-branded, voice-cloned celebrity videos urging a vote against Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterms

MS NOW reported on September 11, 2026 (report date) that a campaign researchers call Matryoshka, Operation Overload or Storm-1679 was posting doctored selfie videos of Hollywood actors, carrying unauthorized CNN logos and the hashtag #AllDemocratsAreCriminals, in which cloned voices disparage Democrats and urge a Republican vote. The video footage was real (a Gucci campaign clip, Cameo greetings); the audio was synthetic. The anonymous tracker group @antibot4navalny first flagged the series; Clemson’s Darren Linvill called it Russia’s “opening salvo” and said its audience was negligible. A second batch targeted named Democratic Senate candidates with false claims.

What the clip says matters: the Sarah Jessica Parker audio reads “never vote for Democrats,” a partisan persuasion message, not an instruction to stay home. Sarah Jessica Parker is the impersonation victim. CNN told AFP the videos “are not CNN content” (AFP page not fetchable by the desk; wording seen only in search snippets). Attribution to Russia here is by outside researchers; the desk found no US government statement attributing it (search was degraded, so this is not a verified absence). Context from Mother Jones: the administration has shuttered FBI, ODNI and State units that once tracked Russian disinformation.