BERLIN: A Russian disinformation campaign is seeking to boost the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), undermine mainstream German parties and sow worries about the economy ahead of the country’s Feb 23 election, a think-tank has found.
German think-tank CeMAS said it had tracked down hundreds of German-language posts on social media platform X over the past month exhibiting what it said were typical patterns of Russia’s Doppelgaenger disinformation campaign against the West that German, US and French authorities have previously denounced.
The campaign, created after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to undermine Western support for Kyiv, spreads links to falsified Western news outlets sharing false information, according to a German foreign ministry report published last June.
Russia has consistently denied involvement in disinformation campaigns against the West.
In recent weeks, the German posts on X have blamed the Greens party for Germany’s economic woes, lambasted Chancellor Olaf Scholz for his support of Ukraine, cast the conservatives as untrustworthy but spoken in favour of the AfD, CeMAS said.
The posts it tracked have shared links to falsified German news websites or to articles on authentic ones supporting their narrative, or simply images. Amplified by networks of fake accounts, they have received over 2.8 million views, CeMAS said.
The report comes a month ahead of the election which Germany’s main opposition conservatives are expected to win. However the strength of the AfD, polling in second place, could make the arithmetic of forming a coalition – and governance in general – more difficult if it can swing a blocking minority.
