DAccording to a report, the Foreign Office has uncovered a Russian disinformation campaign on the online platform X, formerly Twitter. The aim of the campaign is apparently to increase discontent against the traffic light government and undermine support for Ukraine, “Spiegel” reported on Friday. Experts were commissioned by the Foreign Office to analyze the short message service X using special software and came across a massive network of false user accounts that spread German-language content.

In the investigation period from December 20th to January 20th, the experts identified more than 50,000 fake user accounts that sent a total of more than a million German-language tweets. The accusation often appears in the tweets that the federal government is neglecting its own population in order to support Ukraine, the “Spiegel” reported, citing the confidential analysis. This is particularly worrying for experts because of the upcoming European elections this year as well as three state elections in East Germany and possible Russian influence on them.

The Federal Foreign Office has been monitoring debates on foreign policy topics in online networks for some time with several data analysts. The aim is to uncover attempts to exert influence by foreign actors. “Disinformation has become a global threat factor,” a Foreign Office spokesman told “Spiegel”. “It is deliberately used by those who do not share our values ​​to destabilize entire societies – not just in Western democracies, but everywhere.”

According to the report, so-called doppelgangers are often used for such disinformation campaigns. Websites of well-known media or ministries are recreated and placed on the Internet. False news is then published on these and spread via X. Such look-alike websites can often be identified by the wrong domain ending. For example, instead of .de there will be .ltd. The experts noticed the campaign, among other things, after a fake X post by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock made the rounds in September last year. It looked deceptively real; the creators had only neglected to remove a Cyrillic symbol – a clear indication of the masterminds. The effectiveness of the campaign is difficult to measure, the report says.