Russian Disinformation Campaigns Target Saxony-Anhalt State Election with False Claims

On Sunday, Saxony-Anhalt held one of Germany's most consequential elections in years. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a decisive lead, putting the party in a position to potentially form the first far-right state government in Germany since World War II.

In the days before the vote, false and misleading claims seized on the election's importance, with social media users alleging fraud, vote-rigging and irregularities in the handling and counting of ballots.

DW Fact Check previously documented some of these tactics as part of Matryoshka, also known as Operation Overload, a Russian-linked influence operation targeting German elections.

Below, we take a closer look at some more recent claims.

Fake video shows election workers destroying AfD ballots

Claim: "German election workers recorded themselves outright destroying ballots that were cast for the populist party 'Alternative For Germany' (AfD), during Germany's recent elections," reads a post viewed 10,000 times on X, posted by a QAnon-associated account, a far-right American political conspiracy theory and political movement.

A one-minute video shows a white-gloved man unpacking ballots from red envelopes, laying them on a table, and drawing a black X through ones that select the AfD. A ballot marked for the CDU is set aside, as a voice says in German, "these are OK."

The same video was shared by numerous other accounts, in German and English across social media platforms X and YouTube.

Verdict: False

There are several telltale signs that this video is staged. Most obviously, all three crossed-out ballots contain the same name.

They're also missing a hole punch in the top right corner, a regulation that ensures ballots can be used with a template for blind or visually impaired voters. The envelopes are also already unsealed.

The Gnida Project, a Russian disinformation watchdog group, said the video was part of the Storm-1516 campaign.

Storm-1516, a unit controlled by Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, was also active ahead of Germany's 2025 federal election.

Read more on disinformation around Germany's postal voting system

Russian disinfo campaign alleges CDU fraud

Claim: The CDU is engaging in fraud in the Saxony-Anhalt election. "The social media pages of deceased residents of Saxony-Anhalt have become a platform for the #CDU's election campaign," reads one post on X, sharing a spoofed DW video.

"According to T-Online, non-existent citizens are set to vote by post for the #CDU in the Saxony-Anhalt election," reads another.

Verdict: False

DW Fact check reviewed five videos following a near-identical template: each was about a minute long and was posted by an account with zero followers and nearly no other posts. The videos feature a reputable news outlet's logo in the corner — including DW, ARD, WIRED, and BBC — and make claims about the CDU committing election fraud.

The claims range from the CDU using a database of Nazi soldier names to register fake ballots, to residents receiving campaign messages from deceased relatives.

Each video ends with a message urging viewers to "share this video with your family and friends in any way you see fit".

One of the videos claims T-Online disinformation reporter Lars Wienand had "obtained evidence that the CDU will attempt to rig the election." Wienand confirmed he had reported no such thing, writing to DW that "it's not the first time that suspected Russian disinformation had misused my name and image."

Julia Smirnova, disinformation expert and senior researcher at the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy, told DW the posts were part of the Matryoshka Russian disinformation campaign, also known as Operation Overload.

"As with other Matryoshka videos, the reach is mostly inauthentic," she wrote in an email to DW.

DW Fact Check has previously documented the same operation targeting candidates in Germany's state elections. We identified more than 180 fake posts on X, Bluesky and TikTok, many of them using the logos and formats of established media outlets to spread fabricated allegations about politicians.

Read more on Russian disinformation targeting German elections

Did Halle start counting ballots too early?

Claim: "Unbelievable scandal! In Halle, absentee voting ballots are already being counted before 6 p.m. That's blatantly illegal!" reads a post on X with over 160,000 views, posted by a right-wing journalist.

Below is a screenshot of German newspaper ZEIT's online news blog, with an entry, originally written in German, titled: "Counting of absentee ballots from 60 polling districts begins in Halle-Neustadt".

Verdict: Misleading

The screenshot accurately shows a screengrabbed ZEIT liveblog entry, published at 3:15 pm.

Only ZEIT made an error, with the reporter clarifying to DW over email that their reporting was just describing "preparatory tasks" and not the actual counting of ballots.

The ZEIT blog entry has since been corrected with a "transparency note" that reads, "An earlier version of this blog post stated that the count had already begun. In fact, preparations were only underway. We have corrected the error."

The Saxony-Anhalt's state election regulations specify that ballots are not supposed to be officially counted until the voting period ends at 6 p.m. They can, however, be opened in advance to facilitate later ballot-counting.

Edited by: Sarah Steffen