Experts at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs have identified a systematic disinformation campaign conducted on behalf of Russia on the social media platform Twitter (X), and the government is concerned about the potential interference in elections.
According to an article in Spiegel, the editorial team obtained a confidential report from analysts in the Department of Strategic Communications at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Using special software, they analyzed a massive amount of data on Twitter from December 20 to January 20.
During this month, analysts found over 50,000 accounts that clearly do not belong to real individuals and are involved in coordinated information campaigns in the German language. On certain days, these bots generated around 200,000 tweets per day. It is noticeable that their activity decreases on weekends and holidays in Russia.
Among these posts, a prevalent narrative is that Germany neglects the interests of its population to support Ukraine. Bots, posing as individuals, express opinions such as "finding it strange that the government does more for other countries than its citizens."
It appears that the coordinators of this campaign are targeting the dissatisfaction that exists among some Germans and are trying to amplify it. Experts believe that the campaign's goal is to incite discontent among Germans, undermine trust in the government, democratic institutions, and the media. German assistance to Ukraine is a priority target for attacks, and narratives about the "defeat of Ukraine" and the "influx of Ukrainian refugees" are also being spread.
Analysts at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs believe that Russia is behind this campaign, and it has been ongoing since 2022.
The concern within the department is growing that such extensive work on the platform through bots could significantly impact future elections – both for the European Parliament and three federal states.
Analysts are particularly alarmed that a significant portion of the campaign appears to be fully automated. Bots from a large group of accounts publish their tweets approximately simultaneously and at the same pace, creating the impression that it is somehow controlled by algorithms.
Moreover, the coordinators of the campaign have repeatedly created fake primary sources to later disseminate desired tweets to a large audience using bots. For example, in September, they started spreading a screenshot of a thread supposedly from the real page of Annalena Baerbock with a purported statement that "the war in Ukraine will end in three months." In reality, the thread turned out to be a photoshop, and the falsifiers even used a template from a Russian-language interface.
Sometimes they also forge messages in reputable media outlets, attributing nonexistent news and articles that bots then massively spread. For this purpose, fake sites are created, closely copying the interface of real media outlets, and even "stealing" names of journalists for the false news. Only the domain address gives away the forgery, and to prevent attentive people from noticing it immediately, bots spread shortened links.
While some accounts eventually get banned, many of them continue to "work" successfully.
These findings were shared with the specialized European center "EU vs Disinfo."
