Russian propaganda on X: Esken wants to increase “political pressure” on Musk

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Saskia Esken speaks of an “acute need for action”

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Bernd von Jutrczenka / dpa

After uncovering a large-scale Russian disinformation campaign on the online platform X, formerly Twitter, SPD leader Saskia Esken speaks of an “acute need for action” to protect democracy. “We have to protect our democracy and our open society from hostile cyber attacks from authoritarian states like Russia,” Esken told the Berlin “Tagesspiegel”. Russia is in an information war with the free world.

“The Russian regime is trying to undermine our social cohesion and our democratic order with cyber attacks on critical infrastructure and constitutional bodies such as the German Bundestag, as well as with large-scale disinformation campaigns,” said the SPD party leader.

Above all, Esken called on the EU level to take stronger action against disinformation on the Internet. The EU Digital Services Act (DSA), which comes into force in February, is a potentially effective tool against such disinformation campaigns.

In addition, more influence must be exerted on X owner Elon Musk in order to stop disinformation campaigns, said Esken. It is "necessary to increase the political pressure on the operator of

The chairman of the European Committee in the Bundestag, Anton Hofreiter, meanwhile referred to an analysis by the EU competence center “EU vs Disinfo”, according to which Germany was one of four European priority countries for Russian disinformation last year, along with Bulgaria, Slovakia and Serbia.

"That's why we have to prepare for the fact that Germany will probably again be a focus country for Russian disinformation this year with three state elections and the European elections," Hofreiter told the newspapers of the Editorial Network Germany (RND). »That means: We have to do more about it. We must strengthen our security authorities. And we need more precise monitoring.«

"The Germans are not yet sufficiently aware that the fascists from the AfD are not only attacking the country from within, but also have a strong ally abroad," the Green politician told the RND newspapers. "This strong ally is Russia with its disinformation campaigns."

According to SPIEGEL information, in the four weeks around the turn of the year, experts working on behalf of Department 607 for Strategic Communication in the Federal Foreign Office identified more than 50,000 fake user accounts that appeared to have coordinated propaganda in German. On some days, the experts at the Foreign Office registered 200,000 of these short messages. That equates to about two messages per second – a digital barrage designed to manipulate the public.

svs/AFP