German election targeted by Russian disinformation, security services warn

Germany’s security services warned on Friday that fake videos circulating online purporting to reveal ballot manipulation in the country’s upcoming federal elections were part of a Russian information operation.

A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry told Recorded Future News: “A targeted campaign is currently being used to try to influence the federal election campaign.”

They said the various fake videos are circulating on social media, and that the country’s security services assessed them to be part of a campaign conducted by a group tracked as Storm-1516, which Microsoft uncovered attempting to interfere in the U.S. presidential election last year.

“There, a video that also showed the alleged destruction of ballot papers was attributed to Storm-1516 and was also publicly described by the U.S. services as a Russian influence operation,” said the Interior Ministry spokesperson.

The fake videos in Germany, which appear designed to foment discontent among supporters of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party, show the AfD missing from ballot papers, or ballot papers marked in support of the party being shredded.

The material, which started surfacing on social media this week, is being investigated by the Saxony State Criminal Police and follows the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution warning about Russian attempts to exert influence over the German elections for several months.

Additional reports suggest these attempts have substantially attempted to drive forward support for the AfD, although other campaigns tracked by journalists and researchers have not been attributed to Storm-1516.

The warning comes on the last working day before Germany holds its federal elections on Sunday, with many predicting the CDU/CSU coalition to be the largest party in the Bundestag and for the coalition’s leader, Friedrich Merz, to be elected chancellor of Germany.

Wariness regarding Russian interference in European elections resulted in an unprecedented legal move last December, when Romania’s constitutional court annulled the first round of the country’s presidential election following the declassification of intelligence showing Russian interference influenced the result.

The decision was criticised by U.S. Vice President JD Vance during the Munich Security Conference last week, referencing what he described as “the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors.”

He added: “You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”

The alleged Russian interference in the German federal elections has extended beyond online advertising, and includes widespread inauthentic accounts on social media platforms according to a German government report seen by POLITICO. The activities have largely sought to amplify support for the AfD party.

Similar interference was widespread during the 2016 election in the United States, when Donald Trump was elected to his first term, as per the declassified version of an intelligence community assessment published by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence during the last days of the Obama administration.

President Trump has consistently denied that any such interference took place. During his comments in Munich, Vance said Europeans’ concerns looked like “old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly, Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’.”