Russian disinformation campaign exposed on social network X in Germany

This was reported by Spiegel.

According to experts from the German Foreign Ministry, this part of the disinformation campaign is its new wave. Russia began spreading its narratives back in 2022, and the campaign is called "Doppelgangers". It is aimed not only at Germany, but also at France, Italy, the UK, and Ukraine.

The article states that back in September 2023, strange posts appeared on social media outlet X on behalf of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock about the cancellation of support for Ukraine. Although the profile looked authentic, it was found to be a fake. The Cyrillic letters pointed to the source. It was noted that the post was also shared by fictitious network users.

This fake tweet is part of a Russian disinformation campaign. Specialists from the Department of Strategic Communications of the German Foreign Ministry used special software to examine posts in X between 20 December and 20 January and found more than 50 fake accounts that disseminated certain information in German. It is noted that experts found more than 1 million such posts, with some days having as many as 200,000. Since the tweets appear according to a controlled algorithm, it is alleged that they are sent by bots.

Another widespread narrative was that Germany was allegedly neglecting the interests of its citizens in order to help Ukrainians. The purpose of such fakes is to undermine trust in the government and media, to sow hatred towards Ukraine and, as a result, to reduce its support.

Such news is disseminated not only from the accounts of politicians, but also on behalf of the German media, which is then spread by German citizens.

Intelligence services that have been monitoring Russia's actions for a long time have noted that the strategy is old, although Russians are now skillfully using technical capabilities.

At the same time, such an information threat is quite serious for the country, as elections to the European Parliament and several federal states of Germany will be held this year, in which Russians may interfere.

• On 22 December 2023, the Centre for Strategic Communications reported that Russia had started spreading fake news in Ukraine that Germany was preparing to launch a new proxy war against Russia.