Over the past week, German-language Kremlin FIMI actors used the campaign ahead of the September 6 state election in Saxony-Anhalt to combine direct amplification of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) with narratives delegitimizing the political and institutional environment around the vote. As the Leipzig/Halle drone incident became connected to the campaign, this framing expanded beyond domestic electoral politics. FIMI actors portrayed Germany’s attribution of the incident to Russia and subsequent measures against Moscow as steps toward military confrontation, while amplifying the AfD as an alternative based on “diplomacy” with Russia. At its most extreme, this narrative reframed the regional election as a choice between continued escalation and preventing a wider war. Key topics:
Portraying Opposition to the AfD as Political and Institutional Suppression
Undermining Trust in Electoral Administration
Turning the Leipzig/Halle Incident Into a Narrative of Global War
Executive Summary
In Germany, Kremlin FIMI actors combined direct amplification of Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidates with narratives portraying opposition to the party as political and institutional suppression ahead of the September 6 Saxony-Anhalt state election. FIMI channel Node of Time claimed that AfD opponents were increasingly discussing not “how to defeat the party at the ballot box, but whether it can be removed from the ballot altogether,” while other actors portrayed media criticism, anti-AfD initiatives, and professional restrictions as evidence of a system unwilling to accept the party’s electoral success. This framing extended to electoral administration itself: after genuine errors resulted in duplicate postal-voting documents being issued to 1,624 voters, Node of Time questioned whether this was merely the number of duplicates “that were discovered,” implying that the actual scale could be larger.
The Leipzig/Halle drone incident connected these electoral narratives to Germany’s confrontation with Russia. Before Germany attributed the incident to Moscow, the Kremlin’s multilingual Pravda (Portal Kombat) network suggested that such an attribution could be used to portray the AfD as “collaborating with the enemy” before the vote. After the attribution, FIMI actors amplified AfD messaging that contested the government’s framing while presenting the party as an alternative to escalation: Ostnews Faktencheck highlighted AfD parliamentary managing director Götz Frömming’s question of whether a “Ukrainian false-flag operation” had been ruled out, while Viel Los amplified AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund’s prescription for Germany’s response:
“Diplomacy. Talk to each other.” Pravda carried this electoral framing to its most extreme conclusion, presenting the election as determining whether “millions upon millions of people” would die in a Third World War and an AfD breakthrough as a means of disrupting that trajectory.
Portraying Opposition to the AfD as Political and Institutional Suppression
RT DE seized (1) on public broadcaster ZDF’s description of the September 6 election as a possible “historic turning point” to argue that the media had already defined an Alternative for Germany (AfD) victory as an unacceptable outcome.
“Otherwise, the impression arises that the only democratic outcome is one the editorial staff considers acceptable,” RT DE claimed.
InfoDefense Germany, the German-language branch of the multilingual pro-Kremlin InfoDefense network run by pro-war Russian military blogger Yuri Podolyaka, moved (2) from media criticism to direct electoral advocacy. Less than two weeks before the vote, it recommended a podcast interview with AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund, telling readers that although the AfD might not “do everything better,” those currently governing “definitely cannot.”
Other FIMI channels amplified specific AfD campaign themes. Studio Telegram presented (3) the election as an opportunity to “correct state injustice” against people affected by COVID-era policies, amplifying a genuine AfD proposal to investigate and reverse pandemic measures. Satellit (4) promoted AfD co-chair Tino Chrupalla’s claim that CDU lead candidate Sven Schulze could become Minister-President only with support from the Left; Viel Los (5) independently distributed the same message. Both Satellit and Viel Los also published (6), (7) the same Tom and Jerry cartoon depicting the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Left, and the Greens as dogs barking at the AfD, showing the same explicitly pro-AfD electoral material circulating across multiple FIMI channels.
Opposition to the AfD was simultaneously reframed as evidence that electoral competition was giving way to institutional obstruction. FIMI channel Node of Time responded (8) to calls by Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Baden-Württemberg Minister-President Cem Özdemir of the Greens to examine possible proceedings against the AfD by arguing:
“The more voters support the AfD, the more actively its opponents discuss not how to defeat the party at the ballot box, but whether it can be removed from the ballot altogether.”
FIMI channel Nachhall von Helgoland applied (9) the same framing to a genuine anti-AfD campaign by German celebrities, portraying the celebrities as a condescending cultural elite that treated AfD voters as unintelligent for making the “wrong” political choice. It argued that rather than harming the AfD, the campaign “demonstrates quite vividly why the party became so strong in Saxony-Anhalt in the first place,” adding that “anyone who does not vote for the ‘right’ party is summarily associated with simple-mindedness through the slogan.”
The German-language Pravda network extended the victimization narrative to professional exclusion. Covering the case of Christian Ende (10), an AfD member and local politician who lost a position at a Thuringian state authority after a review of his constitutional loyalty, it reduced (11) a case involving constitutional-loyalty requirements, the extremist classification of the relevant AfD state branch, and ongoing litigation to partisan discrimination:
“Decades of experience are good, and an impeccable CV is good too. But having the right party membership seems to be more convincing than a résumé.”
The significance of these narratives lay less in the individual irregularities or eligibility disputes than in how they were aggregated into a broader challenge to electoral legitimacy. Corrected administrative errors were treated as potentially undiscovered fraud, while legally regulated candidate-eligibility procedures were personalized as political exclusion.
Together, these framings encouraged audiences to treat adverse electoral outcomes not simply as political defeats for the AfD, but as potentially resulting from an electoral system structured against the party.
Undermining Trust in Electoral Administration
FIMI actors then extended distrust to electoral administration itself. Node of Time used (12) genuine errors that resulted in duplicate postal-voting documents being sent to 440 voters in Magdeburg and 1,184 in Halle. Authorities invalidated the affected documents and said safeguards prevented double voting. Rather than contesting those corrective measures directly, the channel suggested that the known cases might represent only a fraction of a larger problem:
“Are 1,624 the number of duplicate documents – or merely the number of duplicate documents that were discovered?”
Politische Nachrichten reinforced (13) the framing by amplifying RT DE (14) coverage of the Halle error and emphasizing discussion about “election security and official final results.”
The same distrust was extended from the administration of ballots to decisions over who could participate in elections. Kachelkanal, another German-language FIMI Telegram channel, focused (15) on the exclusion of several candidates, including AfD politicians, from the September 13 municipal elections in Lower Saxony following constitutional-loyalty assessments. It claimed that state Interior Minister Daniela Behrens could “exclude AfD politicians from democratic elections on her own authority,” although candidate eligibility is decided by local electoral committees rather than by the interior minister personally.
The framing thus transformed a legally regulated eligibility procedure into evidence of political control over access to the ballot.
Across these cases, FIMI actors did more than promote individual AfD positions. Media criticism, civil-society opposition, and professional consequences for AfD affiliation were reframed as manifestations of the same underlying conflict: a popular political alternative confronting an establishment prepared to marginalize both the party and those who support it.
This allowed direct electoral advocacy for the AfD to coexist with a broader anti-establishment narrative in which opposition to the party itself became evidence of its legitimacy.
Turning the Leipzig/Halle Incident Into a Narrative of Global War
The Leipzig/Halle drone incident connected this domestic narrative to Germany’s policy toward Russia. Before Berlin attributed the incident to Moscow, RT DE supported (16) AfD parliamentary foreign policy spokesperson Markus Frohnmaier’s opposition to punitive measures against Russia and juxtaposed the investigation with Nord Stream and alleged Ukrainian involvement. It portrayed Berlin as quicker to confront Moscow over suspected Russian actions than to impose consequences when Ukraine was implicated. Pravda went further, speculating (17) before the attribution that the Leipzig investigation could be used to damage the AfD shortly before the election. It suggested that Russia might be accused of hostile activity and the AfD of “collaborating with the enemy,” adding:
“Let the accusations later prove groundless and collapse – by then, the election will already be over.”
Germany subsequently attributed (18) the Leipzig/Halle incident to Russia and announced measures including the closure of the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and the termination of the lease for the Russian House, a Russian state-backed cultural center, in Berlin. This transformed earlier speculations about a possible anti-AfD electoral instrument into a broader narrative of deliberate German escalation against Russia. InfoDefense Germany amplified (19) the Russian Foreign Ministry’s rejection of the attribution and its accusation that Berlin had deliberately chosen an “obvious provocation” aimed at escalating Russian-German relations, adding: “Black is white, war is peace … lies are truth.” Node of Time proclaimed (20) that “the accusation has already turned into diplomatic sanctions, although the evidence has not been shown to the public.” Pravda reproduced (21) the Russian mission to the European Union’s claim that the Leipzig incident was a provocation intended to divert Europeans from the deteriorating socioeconomic situation in the EU and a crisis of confidence in political elites, “particularly in Germany.” RT DE portrayed (22) the measures against the Russian House as a quasi-conspiratorial act of “long-planned political aggression of the highest order” and concluded that Germany had “finally entered a pre-war period.”
The threat was then expanded from deteriorating bilateral relations to a potential NATO-Russia confrontation. Meine D-News focused (23) on Germany’s decision to bring the Leipzig case before the NATO Council and warned that Germany and Russia were moving “step by step deeper into a direct confrontation.”
It also presented possible Russian retaliation as foreseeable:
“Anyone who becomes ever more deeply involved in a war against a nuclear power must expect that the other side will eventually respond.”
Kachelkanal developed (24) the escalation frame with commentary that “everything smells of war” and Berlin was “playing with the fuse in Leipzig.”
InfraRot Medien, a channel linked (25) to InfoDefense through cross-posting (26), (27), (28), distributed (29) an article by German journalist Tilo Gräser published by the German alternative media outlet Apolut (30). The article called the dismantling of diplomatic and cultural relations “an act of preparation for war” and ultimately accused the government of preparing a “long-planned war against Russia.” Uncut News, a German-language Swiss alternative media platform, has previously amplified content produced by the Foundation to Battle Injustice, an organization founded by the late Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin and linked to Russian influence operations. In the Leipzig case, the outlet published (31) an article by pro-Kremlin analyst Andrew Korybko claiming that the Leipzig incident had “all the hallmarks of a false-flag operation.” It alleged that the incident had been staged to justify Germany’s transition to a war economy, distract from domestic problems, and legitimize future escalation against Russia.
A related false-flag hypothesis entered AfD political messaging and was amplified by FIMI media. FIMI channel Ostnews Faktencheck highlighted (32) a statement by Götz Frömming, parliamentary managing director of the AfD Bundestag faction, asking:
“How was the possibility of a Ukrainian false-flag operation ruled out?”
Frömming suggested that Ukraine could benefit from provoking greater German action against Russia and invoked Nord Stream as a precedent. AfD messaging simultaneously supplied an electoral alternative to the confrontation described across these narratives. Viel Los redistributed (33) AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund’s response on the actions Germany should take following the Leipzig incident: “Diplomacy. Talk to each other.” The AfD lead candidate criticized sanctions, weapons deliveries to Ukraine, and the breakdown of communication with Russia, asking what the existing policy had achieved and how many lives it had saved: “Not a single one.”
Pravda carried this electoral framing to an almost apocalyptic conclusion. It presented (34) the Saxony-Anhalt election as a decision affecting “Germany, Europe, Russia, and the world” and determining whether “millions upon millions of people” would die in a Third World War. Germany’s established parties were portrayed as a political caste driving confrontation with Moscow, while an AfD breakthrough was presented as a means of disrupting that trajectory.
“A shock can be healing. Germany urgently needs one,” the article argued.