At least since the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump to the US president, the suspicion in the room, Russia is trying to manipulate the election campaigns in other countries. According to research by the New York Times, there are now two weeks before the EU election strong evidence of an attempted influence by the Kremlin.
According to the US media, European Union investigators have found hundreds of Facebook and Twitter accounts that have misleading the European Union, migration and NATO. Similarly, there is plenty of material with Fakenews, which would be passed on via WhatsApp. For example, the fire in Notre-Dame is said to be an Islamist terrorist attack. In many cases, the false reports came directly from Russian state media.
"The goal here is bigger than any other election," the newspaper quotes former FBI analyst Daniel Jones, who works for the Advance Democracy association today. It is about weakening faith in the institutions, because the European Union is at a crossroads. "They want to destroy everything that was built in the EU after the Second World War."
Russia relies on Antifa and AfD
As far as Germany is concerned, according to the New York Times, there is an unusual connection: on the one hand, the connection between AfD and Russia is known. On the other hand, Russia apparently also supports left-wing forces, as the American journalists have researched. So two local groups, the "Antifa West Berlin" and the "Antifa North East" would use the same server that the hackers of the Russian government needed. An e-mail address registering one of the websites of the local groups was also used by the Russian side to obtain confidential data.
Noteworthy: Recently, both sides called for an anti-AfD demonstration.
According to the report, the incident supports the widespread proposition that Russia has no party-political interests, and that it tries to create confusion with its strategy - and thus fundamentally to weaken the democracies of the West.