Germany is exposed to sharper Russian disinformation – and has no French-style defence

Increasingly professional Russian disinformation is targeting Germany. Berlin has recognized the problem, but it still lacks a clear, effective counter-strategy of the kind France has built. A local startup’s effort around the latest Berlin elections may offer a starting point.

Germany is an increasingly important target of organised disinformation campaigns, mainly from Moscow, that are becoming more professional and more effective at interfering in elections.

Russia has long waged information warfare against the West, and that effort stepped up after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since Donald Trump became U.S. president, Germany has been Kyiv’s largest financial backer, which places it – alongside Poland, the Baltic states, and France—among the priority targets of these campaigns.

A useful distinction comes from the European External Action Service. Member states use its definition of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). A single false story is not enough. To count as FIMI, an operation must be manipulative, deliberate, and coordinated, and driven by a foreign actor.

Fake news sites and stolen identities

One such operation was Doppelgänger, which cloned the sites of known outlets and published false stories on them, creating the impression that Western mainstream media had already reported the claims. Germany was a prime target: Bavarian intelligence said 30 percent of the clicks came from there. Matryoshka/Overload worked differently, aiming mainly at fact-checking journalists. Coordinated false material was sent to them for verification in an effort to overwhelm them.

Storm-1516 was more elaborate. Operators built invented stories, backed them with fabricated evidence and websites, then spread them through influencers and even the stolen identities of real journalists, until genuine media and politicians began reacting. The main aim of these campaigns is not simply to mislead. It is to divide society and undermine trust in democratic institutions.

Elections are the main target

In response to the rise in attacks, Germany’s interior ministry set up a project group called PG ZEAM. It also includes officials from the foreign and justice ministries, the chancellery, and the federal press office. In principle its job is to monitor FIMI against the country. It has no investigative or sanctioning powers. The intelligence services also map these campaigns, but day-to-day monitoring falls to a working group of roughly 10 to 20 people who do not act against the operations themselves.

There is a professional debate over whether debunking fake news and deepfake videos does any good, or whether it only spreads the material further. Even so, more could be done. France created a dedicated national service, VIGINUM, with broader powers and a larger budget. It exposed and documented a campaign against Macron within two days.

Many argue that Germany would need only money and political will to build something similar. German ministries and agencies, however, are scrupulous about free speech and stress that spreading disinformation is not, by itself, punishable.

These operations have intensified around German elections over the past two years. Before the Saxony-Anhalt state election – where the AfD posted its best-ever result and could enter government – authorities recorded unprecedented activity. The disinformation clearly targeted centrist parties and their politicians, sparing the eventual winner, the AfD, and its possible coalition partner, the BSW.

The material varied widely. One line of attack claimed the CDU’s candidate for state premier was detaining young refugees. Another, highly realistic campaign claimed destroyed postal ballots had been found that would have been cast for the AfD. That operation was later linked to Storm-1516, which had a clear Russian background.

Experts familiar with the subject say a single member state can do little against campaigns of this kind on its own, and that a unified EU response is needed. The EU’s Digital Services Act requires large online platforms to address systemic risks from disinformation and information manipulation. Getting a specific piece of content taken down, however, is very difficult. The tech companies often prefer to pay the fine rather than change their systems and algorithms.

Artificial intelligence against manipulation

A Berlin-based startup has also monitored recent years of state elections. It developed software that can detect deepfake video. The AI-based tool can tell when content was artificially created or manipulated, and even when a genuine image or video is falsely presented as having been shot at a different time or place. Jakob Tesch, who handles government relations for the company, told Átlátszó that the software is continuously trained and optimized mainly with the help of journalists.

For this year’s Berlin elections the firm ran a separate project that let the public submit any content free of charge. The AI program then told the user whether the material was genuine or likely fake. The project was called Gretchenfrage – roughly, “the decisive question.” The name comes from Goethe’s Faust and is used in German for a question that is hard to dodge.

Tesch also argues that deleting false content is the wrong strategy, and that transparency and public education are more effective. The company advises the German government and believes pressure should be put on the platforms, at least to enforce a level playing field. He called it perverse that they cannot run paid campaigns on the platforms about fighting disinformation, because those ads are treated as political advertising, which the platforms ban.

Gretchenfrage was a success alongside the roughly 85,000 posts submitted. The company plans to use it again, mainly for domestic state elections, and talks are under way about making the software available for important European votes as well.

The article in Hungarian by EUalive’s partner Átlátszó can be found here.

Capion: AI-generated illustrative image [Átlátszó]