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Last week, Stephan Protschka, a member of Parliament for the far-right party Alternative for Germany, took to Facebook and Telegram to share a sensationalist article. The country’s Green Party, it claimed, was conspiring with the Ukrainian government to recruit migrants to stage terrorist attacks — and blame his party.
As intended, the post enraged Mr. Protschka’s followers. “People wake up,” one of them replied on Facebook. “This is criminal.”
The article was, in fact, part of a torrent of Russian disinformation that has flooded Europe’s biggest economic and diplomatic power ahead of its federal election on Feb. 23.
As the vote approaches, Russian influence campaigns have propagated wild claims about sexual, financial and criminal scandals involving German politicians, playing on social and political tensions that have divided the country, according to researchers who track disinformation and foreign influence operations.
The claims have appeared in fake news outlets and in videos that have been altered by artificial intelligence. They have been spread by an army of bot accounts on social media platforms like X, Facebook, Telegram, and, in a new development, Bluesky.
The goal, according to the researchers and Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, is to undermine trust in mainstream parties and media and to bolster Germany’s far right, led by the Alternative for Germany, known as AfD.
Aiming at the same target is the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. His public support of the Alternative for Germany on X, the social media network he owns, has aligned with Russia’s strategic objective to destabilize Western democracies and support for Ukraine.
“We’re now dealing with a dual front,” said Sasha Havlicek, chief executive of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonprofit research organization that on Thursday released a report about the Russian disinformation campaign on X.
“Between Musk’s overt and the Kremlin’s covert operations,” she said, “it is clear from the content that there’s mutual reinforcement there.”
Germany’s election has become the latest battleground in Russia’s influence campaigns. The Kremlin hopes the outcome of the contest, called ahead of schedule after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left coalition collapsed late last year, could erode support in Europe for Ukraine, where Russian invaders are grinding down the country’s defenses after three years of war.
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