At least 1,100 Russian-language accounts followed Republican U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore's Twitter account over the past few days. Moore’s team says they want to know why.

“We had absolutely nothing to do with this,” said Drew Messer, a spokesman for the campaign, on Monday. “We’ve never purchased followers or dummy ads on Twitter. We’ve asked Twitter to look into this.”

The increase helped push Moore’s following on Twitter from about 27,000 accounts on Friday to over 47,000, ahead of Democratic nominee Doug Jones, who has about 39,000 followers on Twitter.

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Many of the new followers for Moore appear to be bots, with only a handful of followers and generic profile art, including photos of singer Avril Lavigne. A look at five of the accounts early Monday afternoon showed no postings promoting the former Alabama chief justice or his campaign.

Sebastian Kitchen, a spokesman for the Jones campaign, wrote Monday they found the reports of the Russian followers “bizarre” but had only learned of them. He said that Jones’ campaign acquired its followers naturally.

“I can confirm the Jones campaign has not purchased and would not purchase any social media followers,” Kitchen wrote in an email.

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The biographical descriptions of Russians following the former Alabama chief justiceinclude at least one English statement from a profile that "I love Russia," but also include statements (rendered through Google Translate) such as "I'm landing a sushi, I'm studying at the institute, I'm getting ready for my daughter's birth;" "I live in Russia, from which the proud is sadly unipotent;" "nice, paddling in all the souls of the company;" "I sell axes, I sign a repost, the best man in the world;" "ONE THOUGHT -THOUGHTS!" and "Mongolia's first and only marketing magazine. Printed monthly."

Messer said it was likely the campaign would make changes to internal digital or social media policies, though he stressed that “this is so brand new.”

“We’ve not done this, we’ve not purchased this, we’re not advocating for this kind of issue,” he said.

Twitter had apparently suspended some 6,000 accounts following Moore by early Monday afternoon, bringing his total number of followers to about 41,000. By early Monday evening, the account was down to about 28,000 followers.

The Moore campaign released a statement on Monday afternoon that suggested "Doug Jones and Democrat operatives are pulling a political stunt on Twitter and alerting their friends in the media."

"It's not surprising that they'd choose the favorite topic of MSNBC and the Fake News outlets - the Russia conspiracy," the statement said. "Democrats can't win this election on the issues and their desperation is on full display."

The statement did not offer evidence tying the Jones campaign or Democratic Party workers to the Russian influx. A follow-up question regarding evidence was sent to the Moore campaign Monday. The Jones campaign Monday evening said Moore was "embarrassing the people of Alabama with another disgusting and pathetic lie."

"Maybe Moore should check with Vladimir Putin, who shares his views on depriving people of their civil rights," the statement said.

The incident comes amid concerns about Russian interference in last year’s U.S. presidential election. The U.S. intelligence community concluded in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign to get Donald Trump elected over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Facebook has said that Russian-related individuals and organizations bought ads or crated accounts designed to promote Trump or denigrate Clinton.

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill said in a statement last month that there was "suspicious activity on Alabama state networks," but added that "those IP addresses were thwarted from conducting any successful breach."

Polls show Moore leading Jones by six to eight points. The general election for the U.S. Senate seat will take place on Dec. 12.