This is not the first time Russia has tried to influence the election. This took place last year, both beyond the European Union elections and the US elections. As German BundestagRussia had already tried to influence the opinion of voters in the 2021 German federal federal elections.
The situation has not changed much after four years. Experts have observed a large -scale Russian dissolution operations before the upcoming German elections on 23 February.
The campaigns are especially to discredit Centrist parties, with most of the fake news “Greens, CDU (Christian Democrats) and SPD (Social Democrats, Chance Sholaz’s party) as well as their top candidates” Is, “Lee Fruhwirtha said. Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy CenterWhich works on the subjects of conspiracy ideologies, disintegration, anti-Jewish and right-wing extremism.
“There are some mention of AFD (alternative to Germany), but Thesis Posa,” Fruhwirtha told DW.
Top candidate targeted by fake news
Here are two recent examples: From the beginning of February, many X users have posted. A video about alleged mental breakdown Top CDU candidate Frederick Merz. It claims that he tried to take his life in 2017. One post was viewed more than 5.4 million times in 10 days.
The alleged proof for this is an alleged psychiatrist called Albert Martens and a statement of a medical form.
In Germany, somewhere else, psychiatrist and psychiatrist jobs are different. The Federal Chamber of Psychotherapists told DW that there was no “Albert Martens” registered in the northern Rhine-Westphalia state. It states that there was no practice registry at the address given in the document which would be authorized to issue the search form.
The video was originally published on the website “Munich from Munich from Weekly Observation” (“Munich from Munich”). An important detail is that users share videos, they repeatedly indicate that Merz has called Taurus missiles to supply Ukraine, a hot button issue in Germany that support Ukraine in war with Russia How to do
Greens’ top candidate Robert Habec and his party’s ally Claudia Roth have recently hunted disintegration. For an article and video published on the website “Katha”, both have been allegedly vested in the € 100 million corruption scam, which includes several paintings from the Prussian Cultural Horition Foundation that ended in Ukraine and private collections Were The Foundation told DW that all the allegations were false.
Storm -1516, Dopelganger and Matrian Operation
Common in the allegations of thesis is that they originate similarly with fake witnesses and documents of the fort. They are then published on the website that look like news platforms but where Disintegration spreadsMembers of a team of the GNIDA project, a group of online researchers who investigate the incident, told DW that the approach was the distinctive of the Russian disruptive operation Storm -1516.
Improvement and working with newsgard platforms, GNIDA project discovered more than one hundred German-language websites It was produced by AI, which was innte, supporters were filled with Russian materials. Websites were teed to publish false reports, which are discovered on social media platforms as X or Telegram by “friends” or paid by the affected.
Doppelganger operation simillarly works. The German Foreign Ministry writes that since the full -scale invasion of Ukraine in Ukraine in February 2022, it has spread the Russian tale and disintegration with the aim of defaming the Western Foreign Policy, especially. “US government Ban ban on dopelgangger stakeholders After the intervention of the operation in the US election campaign last year.
The name of the operation comes from the fact that it basically mimics websites and output, discovery as videos of famous media outlets such as BBC and DW.
Some of the fake sites and videos are easy to identify, but Fruhwirtha of Semas told the German broadcaster Beireshar Randfanka (BR) that it was a question of “mass instead of class”.
Another search operation called Matiroshaka, using the army of bots to launch “Destruction Failure”. Journalists are submerged with details about fake news and are asked to check the subject. It helps The French news agency AFP said that with false claims, fact checkers also spread to “block” from doing their work.
For independent Russian media outlet agentstvo, Matryoshka bots spread at least 15 fake videos in late January that seemed as if they were made by DW and German daily tabloid by bee PictureThe video, which was in English, French and Spanish, reported that Germany was allegedly struggling with the threat of terrorism, increase in crime and fear of voters ahead of elections.
Russian support for AFD and BSW
Leone Pafler of Newsgard, who provides equipment to combat misinformation, told BR that Russia’s goals were largely to “to spread uncertainty and polarize voters.” He said that it was clear that there was constant positive reporting about Rang Right AFD and its top candidate Ellis Waidel.
Research has shown that as the beginning of 2024, the purpose of the dopelgangger operation was to take the share of the AFD of the vote on 20%lease. This is the same where AFD is currently according to elections. It cannot be proved that there is a connection.
Pafler suspected that AFD was getting support from Russia as the party was more friendly city Moscow than a German parties. In its manifesto, AFD asks to lift economic sanctions against Russia, which the far-flung party has not told to war in Ukraine.
Cemas’s frühwirti reported that Sahara Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) had promoted bees by Russian propagation. This has ended the war as a “proxy war” between the US and Russia in Ukraine, which could have been avoided. It would like to resume Germany to buy natural gas from Russia.
Felix cartt from Foundation Mercator, a private foundation that promotes science and humanities, believed that the disintegration around the German elections was less threatened than Russia’s long -term strategy.
He said, “The subject, the Kremlin who wants to control the Kremlin over the years has also become very effective in the German public debate,” he told DW.
It is claimed that all governments in Europe are corrupt and they suppress freedom of expression, for example, these are stories that far-flung parties are spreading so much in Europe.
German Foreign Ministry wants to raise awareness
“Dissemination of dissolution by foreign government agencies is generally not punishable by law,” the German interior made the Reartiv Research Center a minister in response to an inquiry. But it was stated that an contradictory work group was established to monitor the exploration of danger as disintegration.
The ministry told BR that attention was on raising awareness about disintegration among the public and promoting news and media literacy in all age groups. Hence Germany is working with other states and social networks to deal with Russian disintegration.
Carte said that it is not enough to combat the disintegration with facts and politicians will have to accept the basic emotional needs of the society. He believes that he has to “make a better policy.”
Andreas Wikachin contradicts to this article, which is a collaborative project between ARD facts, BR24 #Faktenfuchs and DW Fact Czech. It was originally written in German.
