Russia revives its disinformation tactics ahead of Germany's upcoming elections
Date
1/23/2025 7:03:36 AM
(MENAFN) Russia has revived its disinformation tactics ahead of Germany's upcoming elections on February 23, aiming to support the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and discredit its competitors. A recent report from the German nonprofit CeMAS revealed that hundreds of misleading posts about the election were discovered on platform X (formerly known as Twitter), with evidence pointing to Russia's notorious Doppelganger campaign.
The Doppelganger campaign involves cloning reputable media websites by purchasing similar domain names and creating imitations of their layout and style. Fake articles are then amplified by bot-like accounts on social media, making disinformation appear to come from trusted sources. Initially uncovered in 2022, the campaign was used to spread false claims about Russia's invasion of Ukraine but has now shifted focus to target European voters and undermine Western democracies.
CeMAS identified 630 German-language posts on X containing the typical signs of the Doppelganger campaign, including links to fake websites posing as reputable German media like Der Spiegel and Welt TV. The posts negatively portrayed Germany's Green Party, Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party (SPD), and the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), while highlighting the AfD in a positive light. One post, featuring AfD leader Alice Weidel, claimed that the party's policies would benefit Germany by shifting away from confrontation with Russia. Several accounts associated with these posts were suspended, but Euronews’ request for comment from the platform about the steps being taken to address the campaign went unanswered at the time of publication.
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