Cold Open – The Fake That Felt True

Only problem? It was fake.

Completely fabricated by a Russian-linked operation known as Operation Overload, according to threat researchers at Insikt Group (2025).

The video had been digitally doctored and pushed out via inauthentic social media accounts—many of them automated.

Its reach was wide. Its message, unmistakable: Germany is broken.

And here’s the thing: while the video was quickly flagged by fact-checkers and dismissed by most journalists, the narrative didn’t just disappear.

It lingered—passed along in group chats, hinted at in comment threads, echoed in AfD talking points. The truth didn’t need to win.

It just needed to stall the truth long enough for something more useful to move in.

“In Germany’s digital landscape ahead of the 2025 election,” you might say, “the question isn’t ‘What’s true?’ It’s ‘What do they want us to believe?’”

That’s the starting point of this article: a digital landscape not just polluted by lies, but intentionally engineered to make the ground fertile for a particular kind of political growth.

Not all disinformation is about getting people to believe something false. Sometimes, it's just about exhausting them until they give up believing anything at all.

And in that scorched earth of public trust, one party is positioned perfectly to plant its flag.

Spoiler: it’s not the Social Democrats.

The Chaos Architects – Who’s Behind the Curtain?

If it feels like Germany’s 2025 election season has been taking place in a parallel universe—one filled with alternate headlines, AI-cloned voices, and mysterious websites that look real until you squint—you’re not imagining things.

What you’re seeing is the digital handiwork of a Kremlin-backed influence apparatus that’s been refining its tactics since the days of Facebook sock puppets and troll farms.

According to a February 2025 Insikt Group threat analysis titled “Stimmen aus Moskau: Russian Influence Operations Target German Elections”, multiple coordinated disinformation campaigns are currently targeting German voters—not necessarily to convince them of anything specific, but to confuse, demoralize, and divide them (Insikt Group, 2025).

Let’s meet the key players in this theater of illusion:

Doppelgänger – The Shape-Shifter

Doppelgänger is the grandmaster of impersonation.

Best known for cloning respected media outlets like DER SPIEGEL and Welt (through domains like spiegel[.]bz and welt[.]cx), this operation also rolls out its own original “news brands.”

Think: Kriminal Radar (a fear-mongering crime site), Östlicher Wind (tapping into East German disillusionment), and Stolzvolk (“Proud People,” subtle as a jackboot).

These sites look and feel like niche media, but they’re pure fiction. Their true aim?

Stir up resentment over immigration, inflate crime fears, and whisper that maybe, just maybe, democracy isn’t working anymore.

Even after U.S. indictments and international sanctions targeted its operator—the Social Design Agency—Doppelgänger keeps reappearing like a virus with a VPN.

Takedown one site? Two more go live.

Operation Overload – The Firehose

Where Doppelgänger impersonates, Operation Overload overwhelms.

This network floods the zone with so much fake content, so quickly, that fact-checkers can’t keep up.

We’re talking AI-enabled voice clones, fake headlines Photoshopped onto Bild and Le Monde, and deepfaked videos claiming German political leaders are complicit in terrorism or pedophilia.

And here’s the cynical brilliance: even when these posts are obviously fake, the media attention they generate helps the campaign succeed.

As Insikt Group notes, Operation Overload handlers even tag journalists and researchers directly, baiting them into engagement that boosts visibility (Insikt Group, 2025).

It’s like calling the fire department to report your own arson, just so everyone sees the smoke.

CopyCop – The Content Factory

Then there’s CopyCop, which might be the most quietly dangerous of all.

Unlike the flashy Overload or the sneaky Doppelgänger, CopyCop builds scale.

It created 94 German-language fake news websites in under two months, often mimicking small local papers in cities like Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich.

The content? AI-written, plagiarism-ridden, and heavily slanted in favor of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

These articles don’t scream fake—they whisper “local journalism,” creating just enough believability to slide under the radar.

CopyCop is backed, Insikt Group reports, by the Russian GRU and the so-called Centre for Geopolitical Expertise.

Think of it as state-sponsored fan fiction with real political consequences.

FBR – The Watchdog from Hell

Finally, we have the Foundation to Battle Injustice—a Russian “human rights” group founded by Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin and now run by a convicted money launderer.

It posts “investigations” claiming German government leaders are preparing to build a “digital concentration camp” or legislate the normalization of pedophilia.

These pieces are then cross-posted to fringe outlets to create the illusion of a media echo. It’s not reporting. It’s radicalization in a trench coat.

So what connects all these operations? Structure. Intent. Scale.

Through the lens of the Diamond Model of Influence Operations (Recorded Future, 2023), we see how these efforts are meticulously designed.

Each operation consists of:

  • Actors: Russian state-backed groups, intelligence agencies, and proxies.
  • Infrastructure: Fake websites, social media bots, AI tools.
  • Narratives: Fear, division, and deep distrust in democratic institutions.
  • Audiences: German voters, the international press, and the AfD itself.

This isn’t chaos for chaos’ sake. It’s chaos in service of something very specific.

Which brings us to the other half of the operation: the political party waiting in the wings.

The Narrative Is the Payload – And AfD Is the Beneficiary

If the Kremlin’s digital disinformation campaigns are the wildfire, then Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is the fire-retardant-branded candidate who just happens to be waiting in the wings, selling buckets.

The narratives produced by Russian influence operations aren’t just chaotic. They’re tailored. And their ideological beneficiary, over and over again, is AfD.

Let’s be blunt: the Kremlin doesn’t need AfD to win outright. It needs them to grow—just enough to weaken NATO unity, fracture European consensus on Ukraine, and push Germany toward isolationism.

And for that, Russia doesn’t need to invent new propaganda. It just needs to amplify existing tensions, deliver them in panic-inducing packaging, and then position AfD as the voice of reason in a world gone mad.

Narrative Engineering 101

According to the Insikt Group’s 2025 threat analysis, Russian-linked influence campaigns promote “German political parties Russia views as beneficial to its own geopolitical interests, particularly Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)” (Insikt Group, 2025, p. 1).

The report doesn't hedge—this isn't accidental alignment. It's strategic promotion.

Let’s walk through a few of the key themes being circulated by Russian networks—and how each one rolls out the red carpet for AfD.

“Germany Is Unsafe”

Operation Overload specializes in videos that depict law enforcement as helpless, migrants as violent, and neighborhoods as war zones.

Whether it’s a faked DW clip or a deepfake suggesting a terror threat on election day, the goal is to make you feel like no one is in control.

AfD’s entire platform is built to respond to this. More police. Fewer immigrants. Harsher borders. It’s not subtle, and it doesn’t have to be.

“The EU Is Failing”

Doppelgänger’s “Östlicher Wind” site—tailored to East German audiences—pumps out narratives of Euro-skepticism, disdain for U.S. influence, and nostalgia for national sovereignty.

The framing is clear: Europe is weak, America is manipulative, and Germany should go it alone.

AfD echoes all of this on the campaign trail, especially in regions where distrust in Brussels already runs deep.

“Mainstream Parties Are Corrupt or Dangerous”

CopyCop’s sites published AI-written stories accusing government ministers of theft, coverups, and art heists tied to Ukraine.

FBR accused coalition parties of planning to normalize sexual abuse laws (yes, that’s real). These aren’t critiques—they’re character assassinations.

Meanwhile, AfD sells itself as the only alternative to this supposed rot. “We tell the truth,” their campaigns proclaim. “The rest are liars.”

“Voting May Be Unsafe”

One of the most disturbing threads is the attempt to erode trust in the electoral process itself.

Operation Overload’s deepfakes claim voter fraud, ballot tampering, and even fictional CIA warnings to avoid polling places.

Who benefits from a nervous electorate? Not parties that rely on high turnout. But a party like AfD, which thrives on alienation and rebellion, absolutely does.

A Party and Its Echo Chamber

It’s tempting to think AfD is a passive recipient here—merely catching the wave.

But let’s be honest: there’s resonance between AfD’s own messaging and the content coming from Russian networks. Whether intentional or not, the result is a kind of informational harmony.

AfD doesn’t have to push the disinformation itself. It just has to speak in a key that makes the Kremlin’s content sound like a chorus.

And voters? They may not realize that what seems like grassroots concern is often manufactured consent, built in the backend of a fake news site registered in Moldova.

So when we ask, “Why do these Russian influence campaigns keep targeting Germany, even if engagement is low?” the answer is simple: because they aren’t trying to convince everyone.

Just enough people. Or just the right people. Or maybe just to convince you that no one can be trusted—and that the only party bold enough to say so is AfD.

And that’s the game: not persuasion, but positioning. Not truth, but terrain.

AfD as the Audience and the Outcome

If disinformation campaigns are a form of performance art, then Alternative für Deutschland isn’t just a spectator—it’s the intended audience and, increasingly, part of the cast.

This is where the whole operation stops looking like a cold war-style prank and starts looking like mutual benefit wrapped in plausible deniability.

Here’s the twist that most surface-level reporting misses: Russian influence operations don’t simply target voters.

They also target—and enable—the political actors most likely to advance Russia’s geopolitical goals. In this case, that means AfD.

This isn’t just manipulation from the outside; it’s a kind of tactical co-production.

The Diamond Model's Hidden Layer

Let’s pull in the Diamond Model of Influence Operations from Recorded Future (2023), which outlines four pillars: Actor, Infrastructure, Narrative, and Audience.

Most disinformation analyses focus on the voter as the audience. But in this case, the audience isn’t just the electorate—it’s AfD itself, who’s being handed a strategic advantage in real time.

By doing what the party can’t openly do—impersonate media, push conspiracies, and allege criminal wrongdoing against rivals—Russian influence networks create a negative space in which AfD appears clean, authentic, and victimized.

Even more pointedly: AfD can reference themes like “immigration chaos” or “government corruption” without directly touching the radioactive origin of those claims.

The dog whistle’s already been blown.

How AfD Echoes the Message Without Owning It

Let’s go to specifics.

In early 2025, CopyCop published a fake story accusing Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck and Bundestag member Claudia Roth of facilitating an art theft ring to benefit Ukrainians.

According to Insikt Group (2025), the article linked the alleged theft to a Ukrainian fund used to buy influence in Berlin. It was laughable. It was fake.

And it was exactly the kind of narrative AfD had already been pushing: that the coalition was too close to Ukraine, too corrupt to care about Germans.

Did AfD share the story?

No need. Their supporters did. The networks did. The Telegram groups did. The emotional groundwork was already laid.

And the party reaped the rewards in the form of engagement, validation, and that elusive populist gold: the sense of being right all along.

The Feedback Loop

This is where it gets even more interesting: AfD doesn’t just receive the benefit—it fuels future operations.

  • The party’s growth signals to Russian actors that their strategy is working.
  • AfD rhetoric then feeds the next wave of disinformation content.
  • That content further legitimizes AfD's stance by creating a distorted reality in which their positions seem prescient or inevitable.

It’s not that AfD and these Russian operations are coordinating directly (though let’s not rule out the possibility).

It’s that they’re coexisting in a shared media ecosystem—a shadow public sphere—where truth is negotiable but narrative supremacy is the prize.

Why It Matters

This feedback loop is what makes the disinformation campaign more than an annoyance.

It’s what transforms it from trolling into infrastructure. Russia doesn’t need to build its own political party in Germany. It just needs to make sure the conditions are ripe for the one already in the wings.

And that’s what makes AfD the most important node in this system. Because in the Diamond Model’s clean geometry, AfD is no longer outside the shape—it’s right in the center.

It benefits from the narrative, absorbs the audience, legitimizes the infrastructure, and sends a signal back to the actor: It’s working.

If It’s Not Believed, Why Does It Work?

Here’s the thing no one likes to admit about disinformation in 2025: it doesn’t have to be believable to be effective. It just has to be repeated. In fact, belief is almost beside the point.

One of the quiet revelations in the Insikt Group report is that many of the Russian-linked influence operations—Doppelgänger, Overload, CopyCop—don’t achieve mass engagement.

Most of their content is low-traffic, low-credibility, and widely debunked. And yet, they keep going.

Why?

Because the goal isn’t persuasion. It’s corrosion.

Let’s borrow a phrase from disinformation scholar Peter Pomerantsev: the point is to “undermine trust in everything, so you trust nothing.”

This is the logic of active measures in the digital age. And the Kremlin didn’t invent it, but they’ve refined it to algorithmic perfection.

Welcome to Cognitive Exhaustion

We’re no longer living in the age of the Big Lie. We’re living in the age of the Infinite Nudge.

You see a fake headline. You doubt it. You see another. You scoff.

A third appears—something about voter fraud or a stolen Van Gogh. You roll your eyes.

But then you hear your uncle bring it up at lunch. Then your coworker sends a WhatsApp chain that sounds awfully familiar.

Suddenly, your own memory starts to glitch. Did I already see this? Wasn’t there a clip about this?

That’s not confusion. That’s designed fatigue.

Truth Isn’t Being Replaced—It’s Being Drowned

In this environment, factual correction doesn’t feel empowering. It feels exhausting.

And this is the psychological magic trick of campaigns like Operation Overload: they make the pursuit of truth feel like a fool’s errand.

You don’t trust the news. You don’t trust the platforms. You don’t trust the denials. And eventually, you stop trusting your own sense of reality.

What’s left in that void?

Usually, the voice that says “We’re the only ones telling it like it is.”

In Germany’s case, that’s AfD. The benefit isn’t that people believe the fakes—it’s that the emotional residue of the disinformation softens the public to AfD’s appeal.

“You don’t need to sell a lie,” as the saying goes. “You just need to bankrupt belief.”

Strategic Ambiguity: A Feature, Not a Bug

What’s particularly insidious is how these operations leverage strategic ambiguity.

A video appears that looks vaguely like a Bild broadcast, warning of terrorism on election day. It gets flagged. It gets mocked.

But its existence plants a seed: What if there’s something they’re not telling us?

The doubt is the point.

And in that state of ambient paranoia, any political actor who offers clarity—no matter how brutal—suddenly seems stable.

Authoritarian populists don’t just thrive in chaos; they rely on it. Their policies aren’t always popular.

But their emotions? Legible.

From Fact-Checking to Narrative Defusing

Here’s the uncomfortable truth for journalists, academics, and anyone trying to fight back: debunking isn’t enough.

If all we do is play whack-a-fake, we’ll lose. Because the fakes aren’t designed to win.

They’re designed to slow us down while the real show marches on.

To fight this, we don’t just need more fact-checks. We need better narrative inoculation.

We need to explain not just what is fake, but why it was faked—and who benefits when we stop believing anything at all.

This Is Only Half the Operation

Here’s where most coverage of Russian disinformation stops: with a screen full of deepfakes, a shrug at the engagement metrics, and a sigh of relief that the public “didn’t fall for it.”

But that’s a dangerously incomplete story. Because the point of these operations isn’t just to mislead—it’s to make space.

Space for what?

That’s the part most people miss. The other half of the operation isn’t happening in fake newsrooms run from Moscow.

It’s happening on legitimate ballots, at campaign rallies, and in the increasingly mainstream rhetoric of Germany’s far-right party, Alternative für Deutschland.

Disinformation doesn’t need to win the election. It just needs to unmoor the electorate—shake enough trust loose that the old rules no longer apply.

That’s when the real play begins: when a populist party like AfD can stride into the void and say, “See? We told you the system was broken.”

Manufacturing Legitimacy by Manufacturing Chaos

This is the genius of the dual strategy.

First, delegitimize democratic institutions. Then, legitimize a political alternative that benefits from that very delegitimization.

It’s not about hacking voting machines. It’s about hacking consensus.

Every fake news story about immigrant crime, every deepfake voice message alleging corruption, every fake “Euronews” video warning of unrest on election day—all of it plays into a larger effort to discredit the existing order and prepare voters emotionally for a radical shift.

It’s the political equivalent of a demolition crew that also runs a home renovation business.

AfD Isn’t an Innocent Bystander

And let’s be clear: AfD isn’t just passively benefiting from this mess.

The party’s platform, rhetoric, and communications strategy are already aligned with the narratives being seeded by Russian operations.

In some cases, the talking points are indistinguishable.

They don’t need to coordinate. They just need to coexist in the same emotional ecosystem—one built on distrust, division, and despair.

The louder the noise, the more reasonable AfD sounds in comparison.

This Isn’t Disinformation. It’s Infrastructure.

What’s happening here isn’t just a propaganda campaign. It’s an architecture of influence—carefully constructed, constantly evolving, and explicitly designed to reshape Germany’s political future.

Dismissing it as “fake news” misses the point entirely.

This isn’t about lies. It’s about laying groundwork.

About clearing the debris so a new structure can rise—one that looks less democratic, less European, and far more in line with Moscow’s worldview.

So yes, Russian disinformation campaigns are alive and well in Germany’s 2025 election. But they’re not the main act. They’re the opening band, the pyrotechnics, the distraction.

The real show is what happens when the lights go down and voters—disoriented, distrustful, and disillusioned—cast a ballot for the only party that claims to see through the fog.

What to Watch (and What Not to Click)

So, what now?

If the lies aren’t meant to be believed, if the chaos isn’t the crime but the cover, how do we push back?

For starters, we stop pretending this is just about bad information. It’s not.

It’s about strategic destabilization—a long-term, transnational effort to weaken democracies from within by exhausting our collective ability to care.

And the fix isn’t going to come from another fact-check or browser plug-in.

It has to come from narrative clarity.

For Journalists and Researchers

The job isn’t just to swat down fakes anymore—it’s to name the pattern.

We need to trace how disinfo operations clear rhetorical space for authoritarian populism.

If we only report on the fakery and not the political beneficiaries, we’re doing half the job—and missing the point entirely.

As Insikt Group recommends, researchers should avoid amplifying these operations by accident.

Remember: even outrage feeds the algorithm.

For Platforms and Policymakers

Platforms must stop focusing solely on content moderation and start recognizing coordinated narrative architecture.

Deepfakes and cloned sites are symptoms. The disease is systemic manipulation—and the metrics (likes, views, retweets) are part of the infection.

Support tools like Bluesky’s “Matryoshka Disinfo” label (Insikt Group, 2025, p. 17), which helps users identify coordinated pro-Kremlin content.

But let’s be honest: we can’t rely on trust-and-safety teams at companies that profit from engagement.

For Voters and the Public

Don’t take the bait.

When you see sensational claims—especially ones that tap into fear, anger, or disgust—pause.

Who benefits if you disengage? Who benefits if you despair? Who benefits if you say, “they’re all the same”?

Hint: it’s not democracy.

Remember the Real Objective

This isn’t just about getting you to believe something false.

It’s about getting you to stop believing anything at all. It’s about hollowing out your sense of what’s real, so the loudest, angriest voice feels like the only one left standing.

The goal isn’t your vote. It’s your withdrawal.

So be wary not just of what you read, but of what it makes you feel. If every headline leaves you angry and hopeless, that’s not an accident.

That’s the algorithm doing its job. That’s the disinformation operation working exactly as designed.

Click less. Question more. Stay in the fight.

Sources

Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible, PublicAffairs, 2014. 

Insikt Group. (2025). Stimmen aus Moskau: Russian Influence Operations Target German Elections. Recorded Future PDF

Recorded Future. (2023). Diamond Model of Influence Operations Analysis. White Paper PDF

Antibot4Navalny, CheckFirst, and other collaborators documented Operation Overload’s impersonation and trolling tactics. See CheckFirst: Operation Overload

Qurium Media Foundation and Disinfo.eu, on Doppelgänger impersonation network:

NewsGuard, Correctiv, and Gnida Project investigations into CopyCop:

VIGINUM Report on Portal Kombat and laundering via FBR and OKV: