Suspected Russian campaign targets German east-west divide
A coordinated network of fake videos impersonating major German news outlets is exploiting historical tensions ahead of September state elections, threatening to destabilise Europe's largest economy by boosting the far-right, pro-Russian opposition.
Dozens of AI-generated videos and falsified newspaper covers impersonating major German media outlets have flooded social networks ahead of two critical state elections next month. Researchers from the Antibot4Navalny collective identified 49 fake videos and 12 fabricated covers during the campaign's first week. The material mimics the branding of outlets like Spiegel TV, Bild and T-Online, as well as the Institute for the Study of War, to spread false claims about housing discrimination and supposed popular support for restoring East Germany.
The operation is being promoted on X, Bluesky and TikTok. Investigators suspect it belongs to "Matryoshka", a pro-Russian influence network known for impersonating credible think-tanks and news organisations to lend false legitimacy to its claims. The overarching narrative consistently pushes the idea that Germany is deeply fractured, with eastern Germans facing unfair treatment and political marginalisation at the hands of the west.
A test for the governing coalition
The timing is deliberate. Voters in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern go to the polls in September in contests widely viewed as a referendum on Chancellor Friedrich Merz's coalition between the CDU and SPD. Recent polling puts the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) ahead in both states. The party is aiming for more than 40 percent of the vote, a threshold that could hand it an outright majority and its first opportunity to lead a state government.
Foreign influence operations deliberately latch onto pre-existing societal fractures. "Foreign influence campaigns aim to destabilise targeted societies," said Lea Frühwirth, a senior researcher at the Centre for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS). "It is common practice to attempt this by fuelling polarised debate on sensitive topics and hot-button issues."
More than three decades after reunification, economic and identity differences remain politically sensitive. "Reunification did not take place at eye level, and many people in the East report profound grievances at the hands of West German people," Frühwirth noted. "Structural differences persist to this day."
The ultimate objective of amplifying these grievances is electoral. "There's also the political aspect to it: Russian and pro-Russian communication around German elections favours pro-Russian parties, such as the far-right AfD, and tends to badmouth others," she said. A strong AfD result in the east would represent a seismic shift in German politics, weakening the governing coalition and elevating a party broadly viewed as sympathetic to Moscow within a major European power.
Measuring the actual impact of these campaigns on voting behaviour remains difficult. Reports indicate the network inflates viewership metrics to manufacture an illusion of widespread engagement. Nevertheless, this is not an isolated incident. German authorities and researchers have previously documented similar disinformation efforts, including campaigns named Doppelgänger, Storm-1516 and Matryoshka, targeting the country's 2025 federal elections.
