A Great Friendship? Russian propaganda and the Bundestag elections

“Putin sympathizers”

The Russian language includes about 200 words borrowed from German. One of the newest among them is Putinversteher (literally, “Putin-understander”), someone who can see where Putin is coming from. It was used in 2014 by Robert Leicht, editor of the weekly Zeit. The word is a pejorative term for anyone in Germany who, in 2014, either espoused pro-Russian views, advocated compromise with Russia on “the Ukrainian issue,” or disseminated pro-Kremlin media narratives. It quickly became widespread in many countries. The word is also used in the Russian opposition community. But like any political label, it suffers from an imprecise definition. 

When someone in Germany is publicly deemed a “Putin sympathizer,” the assumption is that the Russian president’s actions are inherently irrational, and any attempt to understand them also means excusing them. But reducing the causes of the war to the paranoia of an old man (the “bunker grandpa,” as Russian liberals such as prominent YouTuber Maxim Katz have dubbed Putin) means reverting to the “great man” theory of history. Pathologizing Putin also implies that the actions of politicians on the other team are inherently rational; that is, that Russia’s foreign policy is an exception to accepted and observed rules. In fact, Russian propaganda is particularly successful at striking back against this weak argument by redirecting attention to the many horrors of the existing international order.

Germany, the de facto leading power in the European Union along with France, has long been plagued by political divisions over relations with Putin’s Russia. It would be wrong to attribute this to the machinations of the Russian intelligence services or propaganda. The importance of economic relations with Russia, Germany’s own interests in Eastern Europe, and the need to preserve its NATO partnership with the United States are often at odds. This is why supporters of a “balance of interests” with Russia can be found among the ranks of a wide variety of political parties.

In 2014, German media were perplexed to receive a flood of angry messages from readers over what they saw as a negative bias toward Russia. Many professional journalists and political scientists were genuinely puzzled. As the Marxist journal GegenStandpunkt noted at the time, the debate over the influence of “Putin sympathizers” had branded any questioning of NATO and EU enlargement as Kremlin propaganda. This kind of “exposé” of Russian propaganda may well serve a propaganda role of its own. Just because we know that Russian propaganda portrays Ukraine as a fascist state does not mean that any mention of Ukrainian right-wing radicals is necessarily Russian propaganda.

Nevertheless, Russian attempts to affect the German political process in blatantly illegal ways have been repeatedly documented. They allow us to identify the Kremlin’s main methods and strategies, which will be the focus of the rest of the article.

Alternative facts, Alternative for Germany, and other alternatives

After 2014, the role of media such as Russia Today in the German political debate could no longer be denied. It was Russia Today broadcasts to which many people dissatisfied with the position of most parliamentary parties on Ukraine, Syria, and the so-called “migration crisis” turned for the truth allegedly concealed by those at the top. Said “truth” was made up of both facts presented as common knowledge (US support for Islamic radicals during the Cold War, with the implication that the CIA supports al-Qaeda to this day); facts downplayed by the Western media but well-known to anyone familiar with the subject (the presence of right-wing radicals on the Maidan, Islamists in the Syrian opposition, and Alexei Navalny at nationalist Russian marches); and outright lies, such as the story of “Lisa, the girl kidnapped by migrants,” which sparked nationwide xenophobic demonstrations by Germans from the former Soviet Union.

Notably, this material was presented so as to target both particular political demographics and the wider public. For example, reports about crimes by migrants and a planned “Great Replacement” clearly targeted conservatives. Coverage of Islamic fundamentalist forces could count on an audience among liberals and some leftists, while exposés of US imperialist schemes in Syria were sure to appeal to the anti-imperialist left. But whatever their political persuasion, readers, viewers, and listeners were exposed to a common thread: the US’s attempts to overthrow Bashar al-Assad are the root cause of the Syrian civil war (any mention of internal conflicts is, of course, “CIA propaganda”); allying with the US is dangerous for Germany, which can no longer cope with the influx of refugees. The refugees themselves are either victims deprived of all agency or living weapons of external enemies, while Russia is saving the Middle East from plunging into chaos.

Some narratives of Russian propaganda are picked up by authors, editorial boards, and organizations that are highly critical of Putin and the current Russian regime just because they are compatible with their worldview. For example, the tragic events of May 2, 2014 in Odessa are seen by many leftists as fascist attacks on labor union activists, even though those anti-Maidan protesters killed at the Labor Union House were not members of organized labor at all. That is, the keyword “labor union” has stuck to coverage of a bloody clash that did not involve labor unions.

Although Russian propaganda media has had an extremely broad audience in Germany, it is still possible to identify the local political forces that have most systematically appropriated its talking points.

The far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), founded in 2013, is definitely the most significant political organization that constantly uses Russian propaganda materials. Initially quite indifferent to Islam, for example, the party began to rapidly gain votes by appealing to fears of “the Islamization of Europe” and Germans being “replaced,” all the while freely citing the “real data” that the mainstream media was allegedly covering up. While some party members are openly pro-Russia, the party line as a whole is more concerned with emphasizing the priority of German national interests that do not coincide with American or Ukrainian ones, stoking fears of Ukrainian refugees, and rejecting any proposed sanctions that would harm the German economy. A number of German media outlets promote friendship with Russia as something that will bring greater independence from the US and strengthen German hegemony in Europe.

It should be noted that the 2013 attempt to create the Deutsche Mitte party, which positioned itself as a liberal force but constantly mirrored Russia’s positions, was unsuccessful. The party was founded by Christoph Hörstel, a former journalist for Germany’s main state TV channel, ARD. The same can be said of a similar project by journalist and Christian Democratic Union (CDU) member Jürgen Todenhöfer. The Team Todenhöfer Justice Party, founded in 2020, which tried to bridge the gap between left- and right-wing Putinverstehers, failed to receive even one percent of the vote. In addition, Todenhöfer, who is known for his Islamophile views, is unlike many Putinverstehers in his critical attitude toward the PRC. His party supports the Uyghur national movement.

Germany’s anti-vaxxer party, the Basis-Demokratische Partei Deutschland (dieBasis), has also consistent projected a “pro-Russian” image, but since the end of the pandemic, it seems to have drifted into political oblivion.

As for the left, there are several organizations that support Russia as an “objectively anti-imperialist force,” such as the German Communist Party (DKP), its spin-off Communist Organization (which had its own split over Russia), the Deutscher Freidenker-Verband, and the Stalinist magazine RothFuchs. But their influence in leftist circles is very limited, and their priority is still to support the “socialist” People’s Republic of China. The daily newspaper Junge Welt is much more influential; there, the Russia issue often leads to disputes in the editorial board (with some members taking a more critical position). One member of the editorial board, journalist Susann Witt-Stahl, who before 2014 wrote extensively about veganism and animal rights, suddenly began to present herself as an expert on Ukraine, travelling to Kyiv as well as Donetsk and Luhansk. Later, she tried to popularize Aleksey Mozgovoy, a commander in the separatist Lugansk People’s Republic, on the German left. Generally speaking, the presumed anti-fascism of Donbas militias has been a key talking point for left-wing supporters of Russia since 2014. Even today, their websites feature coverage like the “Declaration of the Anti-Fascist Forum of Donbass,” held in Lugansk earlier this year.

The only electorally significant actor among left-wing Putinverstehers remains Sahra Wagenknecht’s party Alliance for Reason and Justice (BSW), which emerged from a split in the left-wing party Die Linke. Most of those who regarded Russia as a “lesser evil” compared to NATO resigned from Die Linke together with Wagenknecht. Recently, however, Sahra Wagenknecht herself has been quite reserved about Russia, while supporting a policy of negotiation and concessions. The party has representatives in the European and many state parliaments, but fell short of being elected to the Bundestag. Thus, it faces a struggle for political survival.

Fakes old and new

In 2020, several people I know from Russia sent me a link to an article in Izvestia (a daily broadsheet newspaper in Russia). It quoted “expert” Matthias Fritz in “Abendlich Hamburg” declaring Alexei Navalny’s career to be over. Anyone who speaks German will immediately notice that the newspaper’s name is grammatically incorrect; anyone familiar with the German media landscape will know that no such newspaper exists in Hamburg. Indeed, after the report citing a fictitious expert at a fictitious newspaper (presumably a newspaper, based on its name) appeared in a number of other Russian media (InoSMI, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Gazeta.Ru, Sputnik), it was exposed in Hamburg’s Zeit and then in Moscow’s daily newspaper Kommersant. Nevertheless, similar fakes are still being created today, including ones aimed at residents of the same country. For example, news spread across the Internet about a pig’s head wrapped in a Palestinian flag and reading “Israel supports Ukraine” that had been planted in a Berlin mosque. Need I mention that the Berliner Wochenzeitung, where this report first appeared, does not actually exist? The number of print media in Germany is shrinking, so even a sophomore journalism student could list all the daily and weekly publications in major cities such as Hamburg and Berlin.

Since 2022, “media doppelgangers,” websites and videos that copy the design of well-known media outlets, have been actively used. This method—well-known since World War II, when, for example, the Germans would drop propaganda materials designed to look like Pravda or other Soviet newspapers into Soviet territory—is once again in demand in the era of neural networks. German media attribute the widespread dissemination of such fakes to the Social Project Agency, headed by political technologist Ilya Gambashidze.

Even if such fakes are publicly exposed, they manage to spread. For example, they may be cited by new doppelganger websites, and their headlines continue to appear in people’s news feeds. Subsequent investigations and exposés often fail to reach their target audience. Fake stories are usually about prominent candidates for the Bundestag: their corruption scandals, collaboration with the intelligence agencies, or personal lives. When they are exposed, it can be perceived as proof of the existence of a cover-up.

Sometimes, channels target an audience that is fundamentally dissatisfied with German media coverage of their position; it can be enough to simply stream their protests online. For example, the channel Redfish (later renamed Red Media) gained popularity by broadcasting pro-Palestinian protests. While the channel markets itself as grassroots left-wing media, it lists the (now defunct) Turkish campaign AFA Medya as its publisher, a fabulously expensive Berlin neighborhood as its address, and Ruptly GmbH, another one of Russia Today’s many incarnations, as one of its backers. The channel also features well-known figures of the RT universe such as Lizzie Phelan (Elizabeth Coсker) and Keanu Nazari. Footage of the demonstrations may well be reused to push a narrative about “the decline of Europe” and “the threat of Islamization.”

Frequently, media and social media channels that are not primarily politics-oriented become a breeding ground for the spread of fake news. A free magazine about yoga and esotericism suddenly features an article with the “real story” of the murders in Bucha. A channel about investment or personal growth starts talking about the EU- or US-planned collapse of the German economy, an elite conspiracy, the dire consequences of sanctions, and so on. At the end, the audience is usually urged to withdraw their personal deposits from banks, start buying precious metals, and invest in cryptocurrency.

German authorities have increasingly resorted to repressive measures against those who spread fake news. One of the key outlets for German conspiracy theorists, the magazine Compact, which has been published since 2010, was banned by the Ministry of the Interior, but the legal battle over it is still ongoing.

“Our people”: the Russian-speaking diaspora

Since people from the former Soviet Union constitute the largest immigrant group in Germany today, fighting for their votes is strategically important. Fears of other migrant groups play an important role in this. Soviet emigrés thought they were moving to the “imaginary West” (as anthropologist Alexei Yurchak’s book Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More characterizes the last Soviet generation’s perception of life in capitalist countries), and many of them continue to be shocked by everyday life in the actually existing West. The presence of “non-Western” (i.e. non-white) people in the real West comes as a genuine surprise to former Soviet citizens, even to those who are themselves from non-European parts of the USSR. To reach this audience, one can appeal both to anti-Soviet narratives (“Feminism means a regression to Soviet times!” “Taxing the rich is socialism, and we know where that leads!”) and to pro-Soviet nostalgia (“CIA schemes,” “Things used to be orderly!”). Thus the argument that “soon Berlin will be a caliphate” makes the rounds in areas that native Germans might call “little Moscow.” The media often share news about the desire of “repatriates” (Aussiedler, the clumsy term officially used to refer to people of German descent from Eastern and Southern Europe entitled to German citizenship) to return to Russia, but the actual numbers are highly exaggerated.

Attempts by “repatriates” to create their own pro-Russian parties such as Unity, founded in 2013 by former SPD member Dimitri Rempel, have not been successful.

This discourse makes great use of “authentic voices,” whether of emigrés to Germany from post-Soviet countries; of ethnic Germans who subsequently returned to the Russian Federation; or of eyewitnesses to the events in Donbass. It is much harder to fact-check the claim that “so-and-so saw it with their own eyes” than it is a news article. Russian-language media outlets such as Rupor News and Voice of Germany, hosted by Sergey Filbert, advocate for “strengthening Russian–German friendship” and create the image of some sort of “people’s diplomacy.” Filbert regularly interviews German 9/11 truthers, including well-known conspiracy theorists like rapper C-Rebell-um (Owe Schattauer) and radio host Ken Jebsen. Both position themselves as left-leaning while actively promoting an anti-migrant agenda. The positions of the AfD or Sahra Wagenknecht’s Alliance are presented here as the authentic voice of the German people.

The direct dialog model can also be used at a more elite level. For example, the right-wing publishing house Antaios in Steigra, Saxony-Anhalt, invited Philipp Fomichev, a graduate student at the School of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, to give a presentation on conservatism in Russia and the United States. Head of the publishing house Götz Kubitschek gives ideological fodder to a radical faction of the AfD led by Björn Höcke. Antaios has also translated Alexander Dugin’s work on the “return of geopolitics.” 

What do we know about the fake news ecosystem and how to combat it?

The issue of “Russian fakes” vs. “censorship under the guise of fact-checking them” is hotly debated in Germany today.

According to an investigation by the journalistic collective Correctiv, more than a hundred fake news sites were created in the run-up to the Bundestag elections. All of them were linked to the so-called Storm-1516 project. This network of fake media with neutral names, created with the aid of former US police officer John Mark Dugan, was repeatedly spotted trying to influence elections in different countries. The network works to create an illusion that Russian media outlets are citing American or German publications. Then, supporters of Trump or the AfD quote these articles in the Russian or other foreign (e.g. Hungarian) media. Meanwhile, the articles themselves may have been created by neural networks and promoted by influencers. The original news items may alter statistics, or they may claim that official reports are covering up what they have been told by insiders, anonymous sources, or accidental witnesses. Sometimes people with little professional connection to the matter—but with the right views—are quoted as experts.

Authorities and civil society still rely primarily on censorship and fact-checking to counteract propaganda, but, as shown above, these methods are not very effective. Propaganda and fake news aim more to undermine trust (in the government, the media, politicians, or the education and health care systems) than to promote a single “correct” position.

The Russian propaganda apparatus has extensive experience with readers and viewers in diverse countries. In Germany, it has built up an audience that is used to believing that it is partaking in some “secret truth.” The whole ecosystem of fake news media sources that has emerged over the last ten years has indeed been important for the political work of the AfG and other local organizations. The question is, however, whether its audience will keep growing. Both the AfG (with 20.8 % of the vote) and Sahra Wagenknecht’s Alliance (with 4.98% of the vote) have become more cautious with their pro-Russian rhetoric in the run-up to the elections. The idea of a great friendship with Russia is little appealing to most people who want the “military conflict” to be resolved quickly and in Germany’s interests.