Dozens of fake posts designed to discredit candidates and portray the country as divided are circulating in Germany ahead of the autumn elections, DW reports.

According to the news outlet, the campaign mainly targets local candidates such as Eric Stehr, who is running for the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament for the socialist Left party and discovered a series of social media posts claiming that he murdered his grandmother to inherit her apartment, killed a model out of jealousy, organized LGBTQ+ sex parties at a university, and was implicated in a university corruption scandal. These posts featured fake videos mimicking reports by leading German media outlets such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Stern TV, ARD, and Spiegel TV.

Fact-checkers at DW report that the videos are part of a Russian influence operation known as “Matryoshka” or “Overload”. They have identified more than 180 fake posts on X, Bluesky, and TikTok in the run-up to the country’s elections.

The experts reviewed a series of fake posts published after 24 June and noticed that the campaign only intensified on weekdays, with less posts made on weekends. They also pointed out that the campaign targeted candidates from all parties except the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the left-wing populist Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).

The campaign’s messages generally fall into two categories:

  • discrediting candidates through false allegations of crimes and scandals;
  • highlighting divisions between eastern and western Germans.

One video, which mimicked a Eurostat report, claimed that the vast majority of western Germans considered the country’s reunification in 1990 a “historic mistake,” while numerous other posts claimed that eastern Germans faced systematic discrimination, that East Germany saw less security and infrastructure investment, and that experts predicted a new division of Germany by 2030.

“The goal is to pit eastern and western Germans against one another, or to suggest that people in eastern Germany are despised, hated, or discriminated against by western Germans. It is also about harming specific politicians through false accusations,” explained Julia Smirnova, researcher at the Berlin-based Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS).

Experts interviewed by DW said that despite the campaign’s intensity, its impact appeared limited so far.

Many posts received tens of thousands of views, sometimes over 100,000, yet generated little genuine engagement: comments and shares remained relatively low, and previous studies suggested that disinformation campaigns like “Matryoshka/Overload” only achieved modest influence in the past.

In 2025, Germany accused Russia of a cyber-attack on air traffic control and attempted electoral interference in 2024.