A disinformation campaign is intensifying in Germany, aimed at interfering with the elections and influencing their results from beyond the country’s borders. As foreign actors keep pouring in their propaganda flows, Germany’s Focus magazine says it’s Russia who is the main source of such campaigns.
The newspaper notes that foreign puppeteers have been seeking to meddle in the Bundestag election on September 26. Over the past few months, Germany’s security agencies have seen an increasing number of attempts to this end.
According to the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Russia and China have been pursuing their propaganda efforts on a scale last seen during the Cold War. Observers are seeing RT Deutsch, a German branch of Russia’s major propaganda TV outlet, as a powerful mouthpiece for the Moscow government. In fact, Germans share its content across Twitter more often than publications by most national media. Some of the outlet’s videos gain up to several hundred thousand views.
For several months, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which cooperates with the German Marshall Fund, has been observing Russia and China, as well as Turkey and Iran, escalate the agenda ahead of Germany’s elections.
Russian government-sponsored media have grown very influential in Germany, having managed to penetrate the country’s domestic politics, mainly through emotional narratives. Sometimes they directly relate to certain candidates running for parliament. Green Party candidate Annalena Berbock gets most of their attention.
RT Deutsch’s content often fails to meet the principles of balanced and impartial journalism. Rather, they are intended, by covering up significant facts, to sow uncertainty among German voters.
Russia is imposing the idea that the German government is about to introduce mandated COVID-19 vaccination. Against this backdrop, Russia is fueling protests against the pandemic-related restriction measures. In the past, worth noting were fake news originating from Russia, alleging corruption among election officials, as well as looting by migrants in the areas affected by devastating floods.
Among other tools, Russia resorts to totally fake material, including fictitious quotes by German politicians that they spread across the web, as well as outright cyber attacks. Thomas Haldenwang, President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, told ZDF TV that some cyber actors have been actively trying since February to penetrate e-mails of German officials, including of Bundestag lawmakers. It is obvious that it was Russian intelligence that was behind the cyber attack on the Bundestag. After all, under a massive counterintelligence umbrella set up in Russia, no major hacker group would survive if it chose to operate beyond government auspices. Moreover, the said attacks on the Bundestag have already been identified as operations by Russian military intelligence. So, in June 2015 German Bundestag & Political Parties Germany’s Federal Office for Security in Information Technology (BSI) announced that APT28 was likely responsible for the spear phishing emails sent to members of several German political parties. The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, BundesamtfürVerfassungsschutz (BfV), also attributed the June 2015 compromise of the Bundestag’s networks to APT28, affiliated with GRU.
The authorities in Germany are most focused on threats to the legitimate vote count. However, based on the cases of Russian meddling in the U.S. elections, as well as their psyops during Brexit and EU’s vaccination and quarantine campaigns, the most significant risks come from disinformation and campaigns on shifting public opinions.
According to Germany officials, the country’s vote count system isn’t too vulnerable to external interference given its low digitalization degree. Nevertheless, Federal electoral officials are working out various scenarios of incoming threats. However, according to our assessment, Berlin is overestimating its preparedness to tackle hostile cyberspace operations. After all, Russian campaigns during the migration crisis turned out to be rather sensitive for German authorities. One of them was launched in 2016 with a Russian Channel One TV host reporting a story about a Russian speaking girl living in Germany who had allegedly been subjected to violence by refugees.
Certain political forces in Germany have already been infiltrated by the Russians.
The numerous Russlandversteher (“Russia understanders”) in the German elite are one obvious target for Russian information operations. Moscow attempts to cultivate influential supporters through business deals and support for non-centrist political parties like the right-wing populistAlternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the post-Communist Die Linke, as well as pro-Russian voices within established parties like the center-left Social Democrats (SPD). Subjects are rewarded with lucrative positions and opportunities to participate in “informal and non-transparent networks [and] exchanges” such as the German-Russia Forum that promote better relations with Moscow.
The numerous Russlandversteher (“Russia understanders”) in the German elite are one obvious target for Russian information operations. Moscow attempts to cultivate influential supporters through business deals and support for non-centrist political parties like the right-wing populistAlternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the post-Communist Die Linke, as well as pro-Russian voices within established parties like the center-left Social Democrats (SPD). Subjects are rewarded with lucrative positions and opportunities to participate in “informal and non-transparent networks [and] exchanges” such as the German-Russia Forum that promote better relations with Moscow.
Germany has been a focal point for Russian and Soviet information operations since the Cold War. KGB active measures in 1950s West Germany included efforts to emphasize the threat of a Nazi resurgence to encourage support for pro-Soviet parties. In response to the threatened deployment of U.S. intermediate-range missiles to West Germany, Moscow organized what Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s government called a “massive propaganda campaign of interference in West German affairs” to force his ouster in the country’s March 1983 election. Based on what can be gauged in hindsight, most of these efforts were unsuccessful or had at most a marginal impact; Soviet tactics were crude and public suspicion was high throughout the Cold War era.
Russian information operations in Germany have focused on specific vulnerabilities, notably Germany’s history of political and economic ties to Russia, the backlash to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome large numbers of Middle Eastern refugees, and strands of nostalgia associated with both Russian-Germans (ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union who immigrated to Germany) and inhabitants of the former East Germany. While Russian tactics and operational art have become more sophisticated since the Cold War, Germany remains a comparatively difficult target because of its consolidated political and media landscape even as the extensive web of political, economic, and social relationships between the two countries provides a more direct path of influence.
Russia has a well-developed information apparatus at work in Germany and in the German language, including Russia Today and Ruptly, a highly active, Berlin-based global video channel. Russia also publishes a German edition of Sputnik News and benefits from a series of “black hat” influencer tactics using Facebook networks, Twitter botnets (collections of internet-connected devices infected by malware and controlled by hackers), and chain email messages.
At home and abroad, Russia-affiliated media outlets regularly opine negatively on German politics and conduct smear campaigns against Chancellor Angela Merkel. One of the most infamous campaigns, the “Lisa Case” in January 2016, involved publishing and virally sharing a fake news story about the kidnapping of a Russian-German girl, to provoke unrest. RT and Sputnik seek to amplify stories around Germany’s failures to integrate its immigrants and both outlets are openly supportive of the Alternative for Germany(AfD), a party Russia favors even over the CDU.
Moscow’s tactics are not limited to soft approaches or the shaping of public opinion. Both the 2015 cyberattack on the Bundestag and the March 2021 hack of German parliamentarians’ email accounts show that Russia has the means and the will to target German politicians ahead of critical regional elections. As was attempted in other countries, information acquired through hacks could end up with political opponents and help their campaigns, unless media, politics and civil society are sufficiently aware and resilient. Russia has also been known to market data mined via Russia’s sprawling information apparatus to exert pressure via leaks, fake content, or by making false allegations.
