Russia is working intensively on a new disinformation and influence campaign for the German regional elections this fall, where it hopes to gain a new significant pawn for its information warfare plans against Europe. That pawn is the extremist AfD party, which is favored by polls to form the new federal government in the state of Saxony-Anhalt after the regional elections. The Russians have not given up on France either, where they hope for the victory of an extremist candidate who would bring the country into the camp of pro-Russian regimes.
Financial Times reports that Russia is using American MAGA social media users to amplify disinformation and influence messages, according to security officials.
The tactic is based on posts written in English, then disseminated on platforms such as Elon Musk’s Twitter. Their aim is to influence German voters to support the extremist party Alternative for Germany.
This is about a different tactic used by the Russians to influence the German elections. In the past, the Kremlin directly targeted the German public.
Not only Germany is the target, however, but also France. Recently, three candidates for next year’s French presidential elections have been directly targeted by the Russians in disinformation and defamation campaigns. These are the former Macronist prime ministers Gabriel Attal and Edouard Philippe, and Raphael Glucksmann, a possible candidate of the moderate left.
Viginum, the French agency for combating online disinformation, has confirmed that it has identified an operation against Attal and attributed it, “with a high degree of confidence,” to “pro-Russian” disinformation tactics.
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