Did you know that Ukraine immediately sells the weapons it receives for free from Germany to Hamas, who uses them to murder Jews in Israel?
No? And good, because it’s certainly not true. But with this and similar falsehoods, Moscow is trying to influence political life in Germany to its advantage.
This book shows how the Kremlin orchestrates a complex interplay between intelligence agencies, media channels, bots, and social media troll factories. Migrants, coronavirus, right-wing or left-wing extremism, the war in Ukraine or Gaza—every day, half-truths or completely fabricated stories on all these topics are spread in Germany. This hinders productive discourse, fosters political extremism, and undermines trust in democracy. This has been the reality for years, a reality that few people know about but has enormous consequences.
Russia today is a violent imperialist state, far more dangerous than the Soviet Union to whose greatness it dreams of returning. A new realism, a common strategic approach, and decisive countermeasures are necessary and long overdue, argue the book’s authors, Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven and Leon Erlenhorst.