Russia promotes far-right in German elections with disinformation, report says
Photo: Russia is waging a disinformation campaign ahead of the German elections (Getty Images)
Russia's disinformation campaign is aimed at supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, undermining mainstream German parties and sowing anxiety about the economy ahead of the country's February 23 elections, Reuters reports.
The German think tank CeMAS reported that over the past month, it has tracked hundreds of posts in German on the social media platform X that demonstrate typical patterns of Russia's Doppelgaenger (“evil double”) disinformation campaign against the West, which has been previously condemned by German, US and French authorities.
According to a report by the German Foreign Ministry published last June, the campaign, created after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine to undermine Western support for Kyiv, spreads links to falsified Western news outlets that spread false information.
According to CeMAS, in recent weeks, German posts on X have blamed the Green Party for Germany's economic problems, criticized Chancellor Olaf Scholz for his support of Ukraine, and called the Conservatives unreliable but spoke in favor of the AfD.
The posts he monitored shared links to fake German news sites or articles on real sites supporting their narrative, or simply images. Reinforced by networks of fake accounts, they received more than 2.8 million views, CeMAS said.
The report comes a month before elections that are expected to be won by Germany's main opposition conservatives. However, the second-place AfD's strength could complicate the arithmetic of coalition formation - and governance in general - if it manages to win over the blocking minority.
Musk factor
In December, the anti-immigrant AfD party gained the support of X owner Elon Musk, who this month also hosted a chat on his platform with the party's chancellor candidate, Alice Weidel.
A poll released on January 18 by the INSA sociological service showed the Conservatives gaining 29% and the AfD 21%, twice as much as in the 2021 elections. Scholz's Social Democrats were in third place with 16%, and the Greens with 13%.
In November, Germany's domestic intelligence service (BfV) announced that it had set up a task force to stop any attempts by foreign powers to influence the federal elections.
Germany is Ukraine's second-largest financial and military backer and is committed to helping it repel the full-scale Russian invasion that began nearly three years ago.
According to the BfV, this has led to a sharp increase in Moscow's aggressive behavior toward Germany and other Ukrainian allies.
Last year, the US Department of Justice said that Operation Russian Double was organized by the Russian government through a group of Russian marketing agencies.
