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Fact check: Russian disinformation targets German elections

Deutsche Welle · 🇩🇪 public Germany · · 1529 words · By Joscha Weber
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What to know about Fact check: Russian disinformation targets German elections

Fact check: Russian disinformation targets German elections August 3, 2026 Eric Stehr was unsure what to think when he first saw fake videos about himself.

Claims checked 17
Techniques found 0
Topics 0

Coverage spectrum

Coverage gap: Low Left coverage
Left0%
Center80%
Right20%

5 sources compared across this story cluster. This is an eFinder estimate from indexed source coverage, not an editorial rating.

What happened

Fact check: Russian disinformation targets German elections August 3, 2026 Eric Stehr was unsure what to think when he first saw fake videos about himself.

Why it matters

He describes his reaction as "mixed feelings," somewhere between amusement and concern, laughter, and helplessness.

Common ground

"I don't want something like that online," he told DW.

Perspective signals

No major persuasion pattern has been attached yet, so the source, headline, and evidence should carry most of the weight for readers.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://www.dw.com/en/operation-overload-matryoshka-state-elections-local-electi…

fact_checkClaims Checked

eFinder analyzed this article and checked 17 claims against available evidence, cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia. Here is what the fact-checking layer found.

schedule Pending 7
check_circle Corroborated 5
help Insufficient Evidence 2
info Single Source 2
verified Verified By Reference 1
schedule
Claim 1: “the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) describes Operation Matryoshka as 'a Russian-aligned operation' and links the campaign to the group Storm-1679.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
help
Claim 2: “This influence campaign has been active across multiple platforms since September 2023”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was provided in the search results to confirm the start date of the Matryoshka campaign as September 2023.
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Claim 3: “A spokesperson for the police confirmed to DW that Stehr is not under investigation and has not been suspected of murder.”
CORROBORATED
The evidence from a fact-check report confirms that police stated Eric Stehr is not under investigation for murder.
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web search NEUTRAL — Eric Stehr, a German student running for the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament with the Left party, faces fake videos and posts on X that falsely claim major German media outlets reported allegations abo…
https://briefly.co/anchor/Germany_politics/story/fact-check-…
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web search NEUTRAL — a police officer murdering an unnamed Black man in minneapolis.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/26/minneapolis…
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web search NEUTRAL — A 26-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder following the death of Ann Widdecombe, police say. Devon and Cornwall Police say a white British male is in custody after the 78-year-old was…
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cp9l8l05vxet
info
Claim 4: “DW Fact Check has identified more than 180 fake posts on X, Bluesky and TikTok ahead of the upcoming elections.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The specific number '180 fake posts' is not corroborated by any of the other provided evidence sources; the provided search results for this claim are irrelevant (dictionary definitions and unrelated Wikipedia pages).
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (born October 13, 1989), also known as AOC, is an American politician and activist who has served since 2019 as the U.S. representative for New York's 14th congressional distr…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The list of weather records includes the most extreme occurrences of weather phenomena for various categories. Many weather records are measured under specific conditions—such as surface temperature a…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Robot Alchemic Drive or R.A.D., sold in Japan as Gigantic Drive is a 2002 action-adventure mecha fighting video game developed by Sandlot and published by Enix for the PlayStation 2. The game is set d…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Alchemic_Drive
+ 3 more evidence sources
verified
Claim 5: “the election on September 6”
VERIFIED BY REFERENCE
Both Wikipedia and web search results explicitly state that the 2026 Saxony-Anhalt state election will be held on September 6, 2026.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt is the parliament of the German federal state Saxony-Anhalt. It convenes in Magdeburg and currently consists of 97 members of six parties. The current majority is a coalit…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landtag_of_Saxony-Anhalt
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Saxony-Anhalt ( ... AHN-hahlt; German: Sachsen-Anhalt [ˌzaksn̩ ˈʔanhalt] ; Low German: Sassen-Anholt) is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia and Lowe…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxony-Anhalt
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The 2026 Saxony-Anhalt state election to elect the 9th Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt will be held on 6 September 2026.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Saxony-Anhalt_state_elect…
+ 3 more evidence sources
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Claim 6: “Many of the posts target candidates running in the upcoming German elections in Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony and Berlin, all scheduled for September.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources (China.org.cn, other news reports) confirm that state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin, and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are scheduled for September.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Three German states -- Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania -- are scheduled to hold state elections in September. Recent polls show the AfD leading in both Saxony-Anhalt and Meckle…
http://www.china.org.cn/2026-07/16/content_118601468.shtml
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web search NEUTRAL — Three German states — Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania — are scheduled to hold state elections in September.
https://www.businesstoday.com.my/2026/07/16/german-chancello…
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web search NEUTRAL — Germany is scheduled to hold state elections in Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in September. Recent opinion polls indicate that the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is leading in…
https://ilkha.com/english/world/berlin-warns-washington-agai…
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Claim 7: “the campaign operates only on weekdays, with disinformation activity dropping off on weekends.”
CORROBORATED
The fact-check report explicitly mentions that the campaign operates only on weekdays and drops off on weekends, and this is linked to the Matryoshka operation described in other sources.
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web search NEUTRAL — Notably, the campaign operates only on weekdays, with disinformation activity dropping off on weekends.Operation Matryoshka reaches new level. Observers were not surprised to see Germany become a targ…
https://www.deutschland.de/en/news/fact-check-russian-disinf…
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web search NEUTRAL — The Gnida Project, a group specializing in OSINT (open-source intelligence) investigations and analyses of Russian disinformation campaigns, says it has identified the Russian operators behind the Mat…
https://www.b92.net/english/world/255802/russian-operation-m…
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web search NEUTRAL — An increase in Russia-backed disinformation campaigns has been recorded in Germany ahead of regional elections in the federal states. According to Reuters's sources, these campaigns are often directed…
https://www.eurointegration.com.ua/eng/news/2026/08/5/724300…
help
Claim 8: “Its targets have included Germany's federal election, elections in Moldova and Armenia, and the Olympic Games in France.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was provided in the search results to confirm the specific targets (Moldova, Armenia, Olympics) of the Matryoshka campaign.
schedule
Claim 9: “Berlin police confirmed to DW that no professional tennis player had recently been killed in the city and that there are no investigations involving Wegner.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
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Claim 10: “the videos are part of the Russian influence operation known as Matryoshka, also referred to as Operation Overload.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources (B92, Reuters/Media reports, and the fact-check report) refer to the 'Matryoshka' campaign as a Russian disinformation operation targeting Germany.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Anti-Russian sentiment or Russophobia is the dislike or fear of Russia, Russian people, or Russian culture. The antonym of Russophobia is Russophilia. Historically, Russophobia has included state-spon…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Russian_sentiment
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country in Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world, spanning eleven time zones and sharing land borders with fourteen countries. W…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR) was a communist state from 1917 to 1922, and afterwards the largest and most populous constituent republic of the Soviet Union (USSR) fr…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Soviet_Federative_Soci…
+ 3 more evidence sources
info
Claim 11: “a Bauhaus University Weimar spokesperson confirmed to DW that there are no reports of alleged university sex parties or an alleged grading scandal.”
SINGLE SOURCE
While the claim is mentioned in the context of the disinformation report, the provided evidence for this specific claim only shows a directory listing for Eric Roman Stehr at Bauhaus University Weimar and unrelated sex-for-grades scandals in Morocco. No independent confirmation of the university spokesperson's statement is present in the provided evidence snippets beyond the implied context of the fact-check article.
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web search NEUTRAL — Moroccan university students have broken their silence about professors demanding sexual favors in return for good grades, a scandal that has shaken the higher education system of the country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-ROhgkeVi4
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web search NEUTRAL — bauhaus.
https://bauhaus.at/
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web search NEUTRAL — Stehr , Eric Roman - Einzelansicht. FunktionenGrunddaten. Nachname. Stehr. Geschlecht. männlich.
https://www.uni-weimar.de/qisserver/rds?state=verpublish&sta…
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Claim 12: “a Spanish-language post on X was found to contain a revealing clue: The post... abbreviated their party's name as 'SvDP,' which would be the Russian version: Svobodnaya Demokraticheskaya Partiya.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
check_circle
Claim 13: “Eric Stehr is running for the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt as a candidate for the socialist Left party.”
CORROBORATED
Web search results from a fact-check report explicitly identify Eric Stehr as a German student running for the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament with the Left party.
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — This is a breakdown of the results of the 2025 German federal election. The following tables display detailed results in each of the sixteen states and all 299 single-member constituencies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2025_German_fed…
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wikipedia NEUTRAL — This is a list of candidates for the 2021 German federal election. There were 6,211 candidates in total. Of these, 1,284 ran only in the 299 single-member constituencies while 2,851 ran only on party …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidates_of_the_2021_German_…
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web search NEUTRAL — Eric Erlandson (born 1963), American musician, guitarist, and writer Eric Esch, American boxer Eric Esrailian, American physician at the David Geffen School of Medicine Eric J. Essene (1939–2011), Ame…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric
+ 2 more evidence sources
schedule
Claim 14: “According to an ARD DeutschlandTrend survey from October 2025, 64% of respondents in western Germany said they were satisfied with the state of German reunification.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
schedule
Claim 15: “candidates from all parties have been targeted, except for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
schedule
Claim 16: “both the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) of Germany have attributed this unit to Russia.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
schedule
Claim 17: “fake media campaigns similar to them of Matryoshka are directly linked... to the notorious Storm-1516 unit, which is controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU.”
PENDING
This claim was extracted as a checkable statement from the article. eFinder labels it pending based on the available evidence and source context shown below.
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.