State elections Germany: March 8, 15, and 22, 2026
The Justice for Prosperity Foundation (JfP) investigated foreign manipulation and disinformation targeting eight European elections between September 2025 and April 2026. In our report, we mapped the operations, domestic amplifiers and their effect for each country. This page focuses entirely on Germany.
On December 12, 2025, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) issued a joint statement: Russia had attempted to influence the “Bundestag election in 2025” via the Storm-1516 campaign. The Russian ambassador was summoned that same day. The influence did not stop thereafter.
On March 2, 2026, six days before the state elections in Baden-Württemberg, the BfV issued another warning . Four days later, a video bearing the CORRECTIV logo appeared on X. It contained the false claim that CORRECTIV, an independent German investigative journalism platform, had exposed a CDU disinformation campaign . CORRECTIV confirmed that the video was fake and showed technical similarities to the Matryoshka Approach . In addition to CORRECTIV, fake videos circulated with the logos of news organizations Bild, FAZ, Die Zeit, and Deutsche Welle. Two other videos aimed to influence voter turnout. One video claimed that the Mossad and the UN Counterterrorism Office had warned of attacks at polling stations. The other claimed that Ukrainian refugees had smuggled toxic substances into the country to sabotage mail-in voting. Both claims were demonstrably false .
On March 13, 2026, a new disinformation campaign was launched. This time featuring Chancellor Friedrich Merz. In a fake video featuring the logo of news platform Politico, it was claimed that Germany is preparing to accommodate 400,000 Palestinian refugees.
In a short time, dozens of accounts on X linked to a Doppelgänger website: https://politico-24.com/ ( now offline ) with a URL almost identical to the real Politico website https://www.politico.eu/ . The information was demonstrably false. The strategy was similar to previous Storm-1516 operations: a thematic narrative, a fabricated video and a copied website linked to a new domain. This is addressed further in the chapter on the Netherlands.
On March 14, 2026, more than 1,200 TikTok accounts were identified that had distributed pro-AfD content for months regarding Alice Weidel, lead candidate and party chair of the far-right AfD. Together, they accounted for three million followers and thirty million likes. 57% of the posts turned out to originate from Nigeria. More than half of the posts used the same words, a clear sign of coordinated distribution. Many profiles had previously posted content about online investments before being rebranded as AfD channels. The AfD denied any involvement.
Markus Frohnmaier and the AfD
One of the best-documented cases of narrative overlap between the AfD and pro-Kremlin networks is Markus Frohnmaier, the AfD lead candidate in Baden-Württemberg and former Bundestag member. Frohnmaier previously announced his intention to travel to Russia to “revive” economic relations. CORRECTIV and Volksverpetzer reconstructed his trips to Russia and his contacts with Katehon , a think tank linked to the EU-sanctioned oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.
In a leaked Kremlin strategy document, Frohnmaier was previously described as an influence agent to be built up in the Bundestag. During a Bundestag debate on November 5, 2025, CDU MP Marc Henrichmann cited those same documents.
FIMI operations per country
Click below for more information on election interference in other countries.
Justice for Prosperity (JfP) is an independent research and detection platform based in Amsterdam that exposes and helps counter societal manipulation and subversive threats. We investigate how actors organise themselves online and offline, what networks, narratives, amplifiers and revenue models drive them, and how they put democratic processes and institutions, social cohesion and fundamental rights under pressure.
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