Automated messages sent by robotic accounts or "bots" make up most of Russian-language messages on the presence of Nato in the Baltic States and Poland appearing on Twitter, a report by the alliance found. English messaging discourse is also affected, with bots – traceable to Moscow - producing around a quarter of all messages.

According to the report, the domination of bot messages in Russian, often spewing out news produced by state-controlled Russian media, muddles the picture for human users of Twitter. The report also says the number of automated messages points to the social media platform’s failure to remove bots from its content feed.

Between March 1 and August 30, bots generated some 84% of Russian-language messages on Nato in Eastern Europe, says the Robotrolling report from Nato's Strategic Communications Centre (StratCom). The figure for English was smaller, but also substantial at 25%.

“The democratising possibilities of social media appear - at least in the case of Twitter in Russia - to have been greatly undermined," said the report, compiled by Nato’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence (Stratcom).

“The findings presented have practical implications for any policy maker, journalist, or analyst who measures activity on Twitter. Failure to account for bot activity will — at best — result in junk statistics,” the report said.

Estonia bore the brunt of Russian-language bot activity, the Stratcom report said. The issues most commonly discussed were the arrival of British troops, and the stationing of US F35 aircraft, together with a number of military exercises.  Latvia was the second most heavily affected country, with Lithuania and Poland seeing the least activity.