Hello - or should we say, Здравствуйте?

Russian bots have been accused of influencing elections in both the United States and the European referendum in recent months.

A bot is a programme or network operating online that interacts with systems or users, in a way that makes the it appear genuine.

In the context of Twitter, it is an automated account, that is programmed to masquerade as a real person on the blogging site. It can even be programmed to propagate a particular message.