Brussels – Infiltrating to strike the enemy from within. This is the strategy of disinformation, a form of hybrid warfare in which Russia continues to excel. It is used to destabilise Western countries, undermine confidence in democratic institutions, and polarise public opinion. The next victim? Germany.
Regional elections will be held on 6 September in the German federal state of Saxony-Anhalt. With less than a month to go before the vote, the far-right German party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) holds a 20-point lead. According to the German market research and opinion polling institute INSA, the party currently stands at 42 per cent, a clear lead over the Christian Democratic Union. The AfD and the Kremlin share many common interests, such as opposition to NATO and the European Union, as well as criticism of support for Ukraine. It is therefore not surprising that the former KGB spy would like to see them win.
The German government has recently begun investigating attempts by Moscow to influence the elections, in particular through Operation Matryoshka. This is nothing new: the operation had already been launched during the 2025 federal elections, but it appears to have changed its strategy now. German social media is flooded with fake content aimed at discrediting the candidates running – except the AfD – and at portraying Germany as a divided country. The Kremlin had already launched two such campaigns, using online trolls – that is, internet users who post provocative messages and/or fake news: Doppelgänger, which created fake websites identical to those of genuine Western newspapers (such as Der Spiegel) to lend credibility to fake news; and Storm-1516, which fabricated videos and stories using amateur actors and/or generative artificial intelligence.
The campaign, which focused on Germany, was first uncovered by Antibot4Navalny, a collective of anonymous activists that has long been monitoring disinformation campaigns, particularly those originating in Russia. It was originally set up to counter disinformation targeting the Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. The activists chose the name Matryoshka after the traditional Russian wooden dolls, as disinformation spreads across multiple layers: one account publishes content, which is then disseminated on a massive scale by other bots on the main social media platforms.
Unlike Storm-1516, which has been attributed to the Russian Military Intelligence Agency (GRU), Operation Matryoshka has not yet been definitively linked to any Russian institution. The media outlet Euobserver reported that, according to the FBI, the operation is run by the Russian Social Design Agency (SDA). This Kremlin-funded agency acts as a command centre for global hybrid warfare, disinformation operations, and sabotage. It is said to have close ties to both the GRU and the presidential administration. To keep the situation under control, Germany established a new Joint Defence Centre for Hybrid Threats (GAZ Hybrid) in June. Although the German Interior Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, has confirmed that the government is monitoring the situation, no measures have yet been put in place to counter it.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
