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| Welle, July 1, 2016. Roman Goncharenko, In Dresden, Russian Flags of Protest Against Islam and Merkel,’’ Deutsche Welle, Nov. 22, 2015; Alina Polyakova et al., The Kremlin’s Trojan Horses, at 16. to Europe. 724 In September 2017, the Russian state-controlled oil company Rosneft named Schro¨der its board chairman. 725 Meanwhile, Russia has also cultivated ties with both extreme ends of the political spectrum in Germany. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which ascended to third place in the September 2017 elections and is the first far-right party to enter the Bundestag since World War II, has reportedly sought close ties with Russian state-backed media. 726 It has reportedly also forged alliances between its youth wing and leaders of United Russia’s Yunarmiya Young Guard) and former Nashi youth movement, and courted ethnic Russian voters in Germany. 727 The German newspaper Bild alleged that Russia had directed funds to the AfD ahead of the September elections through the sale of gold to the AfD via middlemen at under-market values, a scenario through which the party may not have realized it was being subsidized with Russian cash. 728 Both the AfD and the Kremlin have fervently denied any such financial ties. 729 Meanwhile, the far-left Die Linke party has proven sympathetic ground for the Kremlin’s interests, with party leaders positing that the Ukraine conflict is the result of American actions and traveling to the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine to express solidarity and provide humanitarian re- lief. 730 Civil society and popular movements have also been used as influence tools to promote a pro-Kremlin worldview. For example, the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute, founded in 2016 in Berlin and financed by Putin ally Vladimir Yakunin, with reported investments from other Russian businessmen, sponsors research and events with the reported aim to make Russia’s worldview ‘‘popular.’’ 731 The Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West movement in Germany has displayed Russian flags and pro-Kremlin slogans at its protests decrying Germany’s hospitality to migrants and refugees, which have also been broadcast live on RT’s German language channel, RT Deutsch. 732 A few German media outlets also reported in the run-up to the September 2017 election on concerns that increasingly popular ‘’systema clubs established throughout the country to teach a martial art form used VerDate Mar 15 2010 04:06 Jan 09, 2018 Jkt PO 00000 Frm 00134 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\COMMITTEE PRINT 2018\HENRY\JAN. 9 REPORT FOREI-42327 with DISTILLER 129 Andrew Rettman, Fight Club Russian Spies Seek EU Recruits EUobserver, May 23, 2017. Damien McGuinness, Russia Steps into Berlin Rape Storm Claiming German Cover-Up,’’ BBC, Jan. 27, 2016; Ben Knight, Teenage Girl Admits Making Up Migrant Rape Claim That Outraged Germany The Guardian, Jan. 31, 2016. Damien McGuinness, Russia Steps into Berlin Rape Storm Claiming German Cover-Up,’’ BBC, Jan. 27, 2016. Statement of Melissa Hooper, Director of Human Rights and Civil Society, Human Rights First, The Scourge of Russian Disinformation, Hearing before the US. Commission on Security and Cooperating in Europe, Sept. 14, 2017, at 3. 737 ‘‘#ElectionWatch: Russian Botnet Boosts German Far-Right Posts Digital Forensic Research Lab, Sept. 21, 2017; Anne Applebaum et al., ‘Make Germany Great Again Kremlin, Alt- Right, and International Influences in the 2017 German Elections, Institute for Strategic Dialogue and LSE Institute for Global Affairs, at 13. 738 Henk Van Ess & Jane Lytvynenko, This Russian Hacker Says His Twitter Bots Are Spreading Messages to Help Germany’s Far Right Party In The Election BuzzFeed News, Sept. 24, 2017. by Russian special security services were potentially being used to recruit new agents for the Russian state. 733 Indeed, as Merkel’s Germany has led the defense of transatlantic values that underlie open, democratic societies, playing on fears of migrants has become a durable theme of Russian disinformation and political influence in an effort to undermine the German governments standing with its own population. A well-known example of this is the Lisa case of January 2016, a fabricated story initiated on a Russian state-run television broadcaster and circulated widely on social media of a 13 year-old Russian-German girl who was kidnapped and sexually assaulted by ‘‘Southern-looking,’’ presumably Muslim, migrants. 734 Police interviewed the alleged victim and quickly determined the story to be false, but even Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov joined the fray in publicly highlighting the case and suggesting an official cover-up. 735 The case sparked protests by thousands of Russian-German citizens who decried Germany s acceptance of migrants. 736 Ironically, the Lisa case was essentially a victim of its own success, as it piqued awareness in German society of Russian-sponsored disinformation and helped contribute to a healthy skepticism of fake news as Germany entered a hotly contested election season. The use of bots and trolls in the 2016 German election appears to have been less extensive than in the recent elections in France and the United States and the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, social media analyses by US. and Euro- pean-based researchers suggested that prior to the German election, pro-Kremlin and primarily Russian-language bot accounts on Twitter combined commercial and pornographic posts and retweets with pro-AfD content, concerns about electoral fraud, and attacks on Russian anti-corruption campaigner Alexey Navalny— though it was unclear who was managing or directing these sporadic posts. 737 A purported Russian hacker told BuzzFeed News that he and thirty other hackers were amplifying nonofficial, pro- AfD content prior to the poll the party itself had stated it would not use Twitter bots as part of its campaign. 738 Meanwhile, Russian state-sponsored media outlets RT and Sputnik crafted and pushed out stories carefully framed to undermine Merkel and her party. RT ran positive articles on the AfD and amplified German nationalists who railed on the country’s perceived failures in European integration and counter-terrorism, while Sputnik putout stories that played up Russian and German interests allegedly being VerDate Mar 15 2010 04:06 Jan 09, 2018 Jkt PO 00000 Frm 00135 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6601 S:\FULL COMMITTEE\HEARING FILES\COMMITTEE PRINT 2018\HENRY\JAN. 9 REPORT FOREI-42327 with DISTILLER 130 Donald N. Jensen, ‘‘Moscow’s New Strategy in Berlin Center for European Policy Analysis, Oct. 4, 2017. Andrea Shalal, Germany Challenges Russia Over Alleged Cyberattacks,’’ Reuters, May 4, 2017. 741 Download 0.63 Mb. Share with your friends:
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