09/06/2026 September 6, 2026 FACT CHECK: Russian disinformation campaign fabricates media reports on election fraud Claim: CDU is committing fraud in Saxony-Anhalt elections. “The social media pages of the deceased inhabitants of Saxony-Anhalt have become a platform for the ‘CDU election campaign’,” reads an article by X, which shares a deepfake video from DW. “According to T-Online, non-existent citizens will vote by mail for the #CDU in the Saxony-Anhalt elections,” reads another. Verdict: False DW Fact Check reviewed five videos following an almost identical model: each lasted approximately one minute and was posted by an account with no followers and almost no other posts. Each of the videos features the logo of a reputable news outlet in the corner, including DW, German public broadcaster ARD, Wired magazine and the BBC, and make claims about CDU election fraud. Claims range from the CDU using a database of Nazi soldiers’ names to register fake votes to residents receiving campaign messages from deceased relatives. They fit.” Julia Smirnova, a disinformation expert and senior researcher at the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy, told DW that the posts were part of the Russian Matryoshka disinformation campaign, also known as Operation Overload. “As with other Matryoshka videos, the scope is mostly false,” she wrote in an email to DW. One of the videos claims that T-Online reporter Lars Wienand had “obtained evidence that the CDU will try to manipulate the elections.” Wienand confirmed that he had not reported such a thing and wrote to DW that “this is not the first time that suspected Russian disinformation has misused my name and image.” DW Fact Check debunks other Russian disinformation targeting the German elections: Fact check: Russian disinformation targets the German elections.
