What's up with all these LJ bots/hacks?

I know in the Grand Scheme of things (i.e., stealing elections and/or personal data), this is small potatoes, BUT... I still find this incredibly annoying and (even moreso) outright mystifying.

I was updating my Master List, which is a pinned post at the top of my journal, when I noticed that it suddenly had 9 (?!) "heart likes." And I thought, WOW, maybe there are some new Oz fans checking out LJ ! (or at least me) But when I clicked on the hearts to see who they were from, only one was a legit LJ user. I checked out the other usernames, and they were all inactive Russian Federation accounts. Most had last been used 10+ years ago and had only a handful of posts. And I thought, "Huh, that's weird, and stupid, because what could someone possibly be trying to accomplish by artificially liking my fanfic?"

I sort of shrugged it off, until I noticed that the exact same thing had happened to the post for current drabble tree at oz_wishing_well (8 likes). And the master list for the most recent oz_magi (8 likes). And the latest story posted to hardtime100 (7 likes).

SO WEIRD

I guess Putin is trying to cover EVERY base? Maybe he enjoys some slashy porn in his downtime? I want some answers here, LJ !