Russia’s disinformation campaign in Germany has reached an alarming level, as confirmed by the country’s top security officials and parliamentarians. In a public session of the parliamentary committee overseeing Germany’s intelligence agencies, they issued a grave warning about the escalating influence of pro-Kremlin narratives on the nation’s politics.
“We have long recognised the threat to Germany from foreign influence and hybrid warfare, especially from Russia”, declared Konstantin von Notz, the Green Party MP who chairs the committee. However, he added, “We are now witnessing a new level of intensity”, a development he described as “deeply worrying for all of us”. Similar views were expressed by the heads of Germany’s intelligence services who testified before the committee.
A leading supporter of Ukraine since the Russian invasion of 2022, Germany has been increasingly the target of a Kremlin drive to portray it “as an enemy”, Bruno Kahl, head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, the BND, asserted. He accused President Vladimir Putin of using Russia’s secret service agencies to “spearhead” a long-standing “hybrid war” against the West, backed by “a state mandate and all the means at their disposal, without legal restrictions and, above all, without any conscience.” The aim is to “create a new world order”, and the campaign to do so has resulted in a “dramatic increase in the number and quality of cyberattacks by Russian state actors and their proxies,” he declared.
Cyberattacks are not the only method that Moscow has been using. Thomas Haldenwang, head of Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency, warned of “influence operations” used to spread pro-Russian disinformation that coordinated efforts to sway public opinion by blending cyber activities with the spread of disinformation. Among the examples he cited was the recently uncovered “Doppelgänger” campaign, which involved cloned websites, fabricated articles, and misleading social media posts that mimicked established European media outlets while promoting pro-Russian narratives.
According to analysts, most of the pro-Kremlin disinformation campaigns that target German audiences have one of three objectives: weakening support for Ukraine; denigrating NATO; or amplifying pro-Russian views and voices across Germany.
“We see that this strategy is gradually achieving its goals, and the public debate in Germany is increasingly shifting in a direction that serves the Kremlin’s interests”, says Felix Kartte, a political analyst and senior fellow at Germany’s Mercator Foundation. “Two parties that represent pro-Kremlin positions, the AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, are now also getting significant attention in traditional media”, he told the Deutsche Welle (DW), pointing to how both parties achieved record results in the country’s recent state elections.
