Russia’s primary propaganda apparatus appears to be expanding its covert operations against Germany. The Social Design Agency (SDA), an organization operating under EU sanctions and working for the presidential administration, is reportedly involved not only in online campaigns but also in false-flag actions and is developing a Russian-friendly clone of Wikipedia for Germany. This information comes from the news portal T-Online, which cited a dataset containing internal SDA documents and news reports.
In response to the leaks, a spokesperson for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution told T-Online that “the leak is known here, and the assessment is still ongoing”. Dr. Thomas Rid, a political scientist and professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University recognized as an expert on disinformation campaigns, confirmed to T-Online: “Given the circumstances, the content, and the chronology, I assume the leak is genuine”.
According to the documents, servers for the “self-updating knowledge database” have already been launched, and websites are being prepared. This project is set to encompass over 200,000 pages. Critically, this database is intended to be used-among other things-to train AI platforms like ChatGPT using disinformation provided by the Kremlin. The SDA plans to manually edit about 500 articles each month for this effort, with 200 articles optimized for search engines monthly.
This planned effort is part of a broader range of covert operations detailed in the documents. For the first time, these files provide evidence that the agency is organizing false-flag actions in Europe besides launching disinformation offensives. This includes the suspected sabotage incident in Germany just before the Bundestag election, where hundreds of cars were disabled with expanded foam. At the scene of the earlier attack, culprits had left clues, including stickers reading “Be Grüner!” and a photo of then-Federal Minister of Economic Affairs Robert Habeck (The Greens), clearly aiming to discredit the Green party during the election campaign. The Ulm public prosecutor’s office also suspected Russian involvement in that case, a version now supported by a chat history between SDA employees, according to T-Online.
