Russia created more than 180 fake publications ahead of elections in several German regions set for September, German outlet Deutsche Welle reported on August 3 through its DW Faktencheck project.
DW Faktencheck said it has access to more than 180 fake posts about candidates, published on the platforms X, Bluesky and TikTok. The first posts appeared on June 24, and researchers found that posting continues only on weekdays, with a pause noticed over weekends.
According to DW Faktencheck, the videos are part of a Russian influence operation called Matryoshka, also known as Overload.
Which elections are targeted
Many of the 180 false publications are aimed at discrediting candidates ahead of elections to the state legislatures, or Landtags, in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, as well as the Berlin parliament and municipal elections in Lower Saxony. These elections are considered an important barometer of political mood in Germany and for the current federal government, which faces both security challenges and a migration crisis.
How the fakes were traced
DW Faktencheck gathered its data from material collected by the anonymous research group Antibot4Navalny, which was originally set up to expose disinformation targeting Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny and now tracks Russian online influence operations more broadly.
Almost all parties have been affected by the fakes, except for pro-Russian forces, namely the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, a left-populist party skeptical of support for Ukraine.
AI-generated content and Russian traces
The Matryoshka campaign posts use artificial intelligence. The narratives spread in the fakes aim to set people in eastern and western Germany against each other and discredit candidates through claims of crimes, corruption, drug use or sex scandals.
Several signs point to the Russian origin of the fakes. In one Spanish-language post, the Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP) was abbreviated as SvDP, matching the Russian abbreviation for "Svobodnaya demokraticheskaya partiya." The OSINT project Gnida has also linked the Matryoshka operation to the unit Storm-1516, which researchers say operates under the control of Russian military intelligence.
Recent nuclear claims
Russia recently claimed that Germany is conducting research to develop nuclear weapons. Berlin rejected the claims and called them Russian propaganda. Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, told LIGA.net that the Kremlin is using such statements to try to justify its own nuclear threats against Europe.
