As the Ministry of Defence (BMVg) temporarily shut down its X-account with almost 190,000 followers, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) posted the so-called “Russia Toolbox” on the platform. The graphic, in the style of a school newspaper, aimed to make the Russian threat against Western democracies and Germany, in particular, more tangible. The authority shared the image with the comment:
“Our updated #BfV_Bund ‘Toolbox Russia’ informs about Russia’s strategic methods and its intelligence services against Germany and other Western democracies. It makes the complex threat situation visible.”
On the right side, Russia was depicted as a state-controlled, unified system, which arrests or kills opposition and (“alleged”) enemies of Russia, and (supposedly) fights its enemies with attacks and assaults. The left side showed Germany as the target of various Russian activities.
A special place in the graphic was given to Russian espionage. According to this, Germany is a playground for Russian legal, half-legal, and illegal spies and saboteurs. Russia also allegedly tries to aggressively recruit German travelers from the fields of economy, science, and administration on its territory. Of course, cyber-attacks and hacking attempts were not missing, with five boxes dedicated to this area.
Moreover, Russia, according to the BfV, is trying to exert influence on the public discourse and the political space – targeted picking up of themes with a potential for division – and cyber-supported disinformation operations in the information space. Under this activity, this article might also fall. So, be cautious, dear readers! And yes, there are also “other hybrid measures”. These include:
“Building and exploiting dependencies to destabilize democracies, including the scarcity of energy and the potential exploitation of migration streams”.
This logic suggests that the construction, commissioning, and subsequent destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines was a clever plan by the Russians, thought out and executed by the Kremlin from the very beginning. The offer of the Russian President to the German government to at least keep the last intact gas pipeline in operation belongs to this – to create new dependencies.
The seriousness of the accusations regarding the refugee streams was underscored by sociologist Gerald Knaus and migration lobbyist recently on Lanz, as he accused Russia of carrying out terrorist attacks and bombings in Syrian and Ukrainian cities to create migration streams to Germany and Austria, in order for “Russia’s friends”, i.e. the AfD and FPÖ, to come to power.
According to this logic, the NATO eastern expansion and the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011 were also at the beginning of a cunning Russian plan, the end of which is the destabilization of Germany and the West. According to IT specialist and expert on KI-supported disinformation campaigns, Maxim Gärtner, the BfV graphic is nonsense. Upon our request, he explained:
“Russia doesn’t even have the capacity or the know-how to steer such activities. If that’s the case, then it’s just classic intelligence. It also doesn’t make sense, as there are hardly any significant developments in Germany anymore.”
However, if one looks at the comments under the BfV’s tweet, one could now indeed come to the idea that it was the Russians who prompted the creation of the graphic and its publication on X, in order to give the BfV a further reason to disappear into the WhatsApp void, with the goal of persistently disrupting political communication in Germany. The comments of the users, in fact, fell almost unanimously negative, with the exception of comments from NAFO trolls.