HAMBURG — Normally, accusing another state of disinformation, cyberattacks or sabotage is not done lightly. Not only can such accusations become diplomatically sensitive, but proving them is also notoriously difficult. Yet when it comes to the question of whether Russia is trying to meddle in Germany’s federal election, the answer is clear: Yes.
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According to the unanimous opinion of experts, Russia’s current objective is to create chaos and undermine trust in democracy. Cyberattacks, acts of sabotage like arson or vehicle destruction, and social media disinformation campaigns all play a part. These actions do not just damage IT systems or infrastructure: They are also intended to impact the minds of German citizens, fostering a sense of uncertainty.
“Russia exploits situations where ‘the enemy’ is distracted,” says Julia Smirnova, a researcher specializing in Russian disinformation campaigns at Cemas, a non-profit organization dedicated to tracking conspiracy ideologies, disinformation, and right-wing extremism online. “The weaker Western democracies become and the more they are consumed by internal conflicts, the less capacity they have to focus on foreign policy.”
The Doppelgänger plan
Social media and the internet play a major role in this. As early as summer 2024, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Federal Foreign Office warned about fake media sites: websites of major German news sites were copied and filled with fake articles designed to stir up fears about war in Europe, energy shortages or an influx of Ukrainian refugees.
The underlying message: Europe is weak, lacks energy and is overwhelmed by migrants. These pro-Russian narratives are spread on social media, where (supposed) concerned citizens then comment, for example, that Germany is suffering from Ukrainian refugees.
This malicious campaign, known as the Doppelgänger plan, is still active now, during the election campaign. In January, Cemas identified 680 German-language posts on the X platform that matched the typical characteristics of this operation and were clearly targeted at the election campaign.
It’s about dividing the EU and exploiting the existing societal tensions.
Cemas founder Pia Lamberty says the campaign targets various parties such as the Greens and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). A Kremlin-affiliated agency creates the content, and according to Meta (the company behind Facebook and Instagram), entire editorial teams have been assembled specifically to employ teams of journalists for these operations.
Russia’s aim is to increase its influence in the world by weakening Western democracies, explains Smirnova. “It’s about dividing the EU and exploiting the existing societal tensions.”
Doppelgänger accounts on social media do not just link to fake news sites; they also reference legitimate but biased right-wing outlets like Junge Freiheit and the extremist magazine Compact. These accounts even share real articles from reputable media but strip them of context to fit their propaganda.
The goal of these widespread social media activities is clear: “They aim to flood the information space, making it harder for people to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources,” explains Peter Ptassek, Germany’s Commissioner for Strategic Communication at the Foreign Office. This leads to widespread confusion. “People ask themselves: what is here, what sources can I still count on? For every fact, there’s now an alternative narrative,” Ptassek says.
A hoax attack
This aspect of Russian interference is particularly insidious, because it does not rely on outright lies but rather on selective framing, misrepresenting facts, or omitting crucial context.
For example, in December 2024, Russian Vice President Alexander Novak announced that, despite EU sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian gas exports to Europe had increased by 20% compared to the previous year. Many German media outlets reported on this, implying a failure of the sanctions. Die Welt even ran the headline: “Russia Triumphs.”
What Novak omitted was that Russian gas exports had plummeted to an exceptionally low level the previous year due to sanctions. A 20% increase from such a low baseline was negligible in absolute terms. Because percentages can be misleading when not contextualized, many readers might falsely conclude that Europe remains hopelessly dependent on Russian gas that it cannot afford to impose its own sanctions. But that is not true at all.
Moscow also seems to believe in the success of hack-and-leak campaigns and is investing heavily in cyberattacks. Russian state hackers apparently attacked the German Bundestag in 2015, they tried to influence the U.S. election in 2016 by leaking emails, they leaked emails from Emmanuel Macron before the French presidential election in 2017, they stole emails from the Moldovan government in 2024, and they tried to interfere in the U.S. election again in 2024.
It was a hoax. It was the cheapest cyber attack of all times.
The impact of such attacks is difficult to quantify. Russia’s cyber interference in the 2016 U.S. election remains the most notorious example. Shortly before the vote, Russian intelligence-linked hackers stole and leaked Democratic emails via WikiLeaks. To this day, the extent to which this contributed to Donald Trump’s presidential victory remains debated, as political opinion formation is influenced by a myriad of factors.
Yet it is important to be aware that these attacks almost always aim to weaken trust in democratic structures. A recent case in Germany illustrates this.
Suspected Russian hackers falsely claimed to have stolen data from the Federal Statistical Office, the agency responsible for managing election data. Several media outlets reported the alleged breach, raising concerns over election security. Yet Claudia Plattner, head of Germany’s cybersecurity authority BSI, later confirmed that no attack had actually occurred: “The mere claim alone was enough to generate fear and uncertainty. But it was a hoax. It was the cheapest cyber attack of all times.”
Funding parties, clogging pipes
Another tactic involves hiring “disposable agents” — amateur operatives who incite unrest and sabotage infrastructure for small sums of money: take the sabotage at Deutsche Bahn or the arson attacks on DHL as examples. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution warns against these “proxy agents.” Recently, German authorities uncovered a Kremlin-backed operation in which individuals were paid to clog car exhaust pipes with construction foam. The campaign aimed to generate hostility toward environmental policies and the Green Party.
A sticker reading “Be Greener” with a photo of Green Party secretary Robert Habeck was found on affected vehicles. Bild initially ran a sensationalist headline — “Climate Radicals Attack Cars with Foam” — before quietly revising it after Russia’s involvement became evident. The original misleading headline, however, remained embedded in the article’s URL.
Another means of exerting influence is through direct political connections. “Russia seeks to promote parties that pose the least threat to its interests or actively support them,” Smirnova says. In Germany, this mainly includes the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
Recent reports have detailed AfD members’ ties to Russian officials. FBI investigators reportedly questioned AfD politician Maximilian Krah about potential payments from individuals close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The pro-Russian activist Oleg Woloschyn allegedly assured Krah that “compensation” for his “technical expenses” had been arranged.
Additionally, AfD politician Petr Bystron is suspected of accepting Russian funds, and leaked documents suggest that a strategy paper guiding AfD policies may have come from Russia.
Concerns and complacency
Countries that are geographically closer to Russia and already have experience resisting the Russian information war, such as Romania and Moldova, warn that Germany is not taking Russia’s interference in the election campaign seriously enough.
But is that true? Are German politicians and German authorities being passive about the issue? That may well be the case: There is little public evidence of what is being done to counter foreign attempts to exert influence. But statements from the German Foreign Office suggest that the measures in place are not being discussed publicly for strategic reasons.
“Much of what Russia is trying here is just rolling off our backs and has no tangible effect at all,” says Ptassek of the Foreign Office. “If I say ‘Manipulation! Disinformation!’ every time I detect an attempt at manipulative communication, then I am giving them what they want and making Russia seem way more powerful than it is.”
Russia is showing that it thinks that all people are puppets.
Germany is an historically stable country, a robust member of the European Union and NATO, and it also has a critical and free media landscape and a strong civil society. “Despite all that’s been happening, polls suggest we still have a very strong basic democratic consensus.” This might lead to a certain degree of resilience against Russian attacks, but complacency can prove very dangerous.
Smirnova also stresses that when fighting in the information war, one must be careful not to adopt Russia’s view of humanity: Even if there are certainly target groups in Germany that are susceptible to Russian propaganda, not the entire population can be manipulated. “With such information campaigns, Russia is showing that it thinks that all people are puppets. It is important that we do not adopt this perspective.”
Under control?
Fearing the effect of a disinformation campaign is already a success for the disinformation campaign, Cemas’s Lamberty says. Nevertheless, we should not sit back, she warns, even if the elections themselves go ahead without disruption. “The destruction of democracy rarely happens overnight.” In her view, Germany should be vigilant. France, for example, has its own agency for hybrid warfare, and Sweden also has a state agency against Russia’s hybrid warfare.
But looking more carefully at German security institutions, you would find out that there is a working group of the German federal government that was set up across departments in the Ministry of the Interior called the Central Office for the Monitoring of Foreign Manipulation Attempts. There, agents decide on a case-by-case basis whether a reaction is necessary.
“The interesting thing is that — since this working unit was created — there have been very few to no cases in which we have said: This is now so explosive that we have to react to it,” Ptassek says.
But is the situation really under control? Look at the “Climate Radicals Attack Cars with Foam” case: When the largest German daily newspaper uses a Russian misinformation campaign against the environmental movement and the Green Party as its headline, perhaps there is reason to be worried.
It is impossible to measure how much that headline influenced the opinion of individuals, but it’s fair to guess that only a few of the original readers noticed that the headline was changed two months later.
