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As German parliamentary elections approach, the country faces a pivotal moment that could reshape its political landscape. With the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the emergence of the anti-establishment Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), the traditional parties are under threat. OpenMinds investigated 244 political German Telegram channels and uncovered networks of Kremlin-linked sources working to shape public opinion before the elections.
“By blocking RT, the EU aims to silence a critical, non pro-Western source of information [...] It is now up to all of us, in Germany and the EU, whether journalism can continue to operate beyond the mainstream narrative.” This message appears in every RT DE news article. The 2022 sanctions on Russian state-owned media were not explicitly debated – EU and German stakeholders saw RT’s claim of offering “alternative information” as a facade rather than a genuine commitment to diverse discourse. However, this might change within the next few weeks.
This Sunday, on February 23, Germany holds parliamentary elections. These elections might dramatically change the political course of Germany, as the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) is projected to achieve historically high results. According to the latest data, more than 20% of voters are ready to cast their votes for AfD, potentially making it the second biggest party in the new Bundestag. Additionally, with another 20% of Germans undecided until election day, some of them could ultimately swing in AfD’s favour. This would be a drastic increase compared to the 2021 elections when AfD received 10.4% of votes.
“The relationship with Russia is of prime importance because European security cannot be attained without Russia’s involvement” – this is an excerpt from AfD political program. In her recent interview with Bild, the head of AfD, Alice Weidel, claimed: “We want to have good relationships. What has the German federal government done for the past almost three years against Russia? We turned the escalation spiral.” Claims that German and, more broadly, Western policy towards Russia is an endless cycle of escalation align with Kremlin’s stance. For example, summarising the Munich Security Conference, the Russian MFA said that the EU “clearly supports further escalation of the conflict in Ukraine”.
Social media is a vital part of AfD campaigning – 40% of the party’s supporters use social media to get news, compared to 27% of voters overall. Apart from using traditional platforms such as Facebook, X, Instagram, and YouTube, the German alternative political spectrum utilises Telegram as a distribution channel as well. With less strict content moderation than other platforms, Telegram attracts groups that spread hate speech, conspiracy theories, and similar content. These groups often discuss German politics in a homogeneous environment, creating an "anti-systemic" bubble for sceptics, including (but not limited to) anti-EU or anti-migrant narratives, opposing aid to Ukraine, denying climate change, or challenging mainstream views on healthcare. AfD even has its official Telegram channel along with its members like Christine Anderson, Bernd Baumann, or Stephan Brandner.
We identified 244 political German Telegram channels targeting German audiences, grouped into four clusters by political stance and content. The pro-Kremlin cluster (87 channels) focuses mainly on the war in Ukraine, with 59% of its posts on this topic. Conspiracy theory channels (80) devote a third of their content to healthcare conspiracies and free speech concerns in Germany. Far-right channels (73) prioritise domestic politics, highlighting personal security (13%), anti-migrant narratives, and election-related partisan rivalry (11%). The far-left cluster (4) focuses on the Israel-Palestine conflict (23%) and alternative healthcare views (20%).
Another way to assess German Telegram channels is their “proximity” to Kremlin narratives. 81 channels (33%) are closely linked to Russian pro-Kremlin media – we called them “conduits.” These channels spread Russian narratives by directly reposting state media like RT or framing European politics through a Russian lens. Another 58 channels amplify Russian propaganda by resharing conduit content. Including another 14 Russian German-language media outlets like RT DE and RIA Novosti Deutsch, 63% of the German political Telegram ecosystem directly or indirectly promotes pro-Kremlin narratives. These channels have a total audience of 5.5 million subscribers, compared to 3.5 million for those outside Kremlin influence.
Moreover, the echo chamber is amplified by the “similar channels” algorithm by Telegram – it allows a user to see what other channels are in the feeds of a particular channel’s audience. Based on this algorithm, 76% of right-wing and 81% of conspiracy theories channels are linked to at least one pro-Kremlin channel, meaning that channels from these clusters share parts of audiences.
A notable example of this dynamic is the reaction to the EU's investigation of TikTok following the Romanian presidential elections. On 17 December, the EU Commission launched a formal inquiry into TikTok’s compliance with EU social media laws over concerns about foreign interference in European elections. Pro-Kremlin media responded by citing EU MP Petra Steger of Austria’s far-right FPÖ: “It is the governments themselves that spread fake news and disinformation.” This piece by RT DE was then published on the Telegram channel of Gerhard Wisnewski, a prominent conspiracy theorist and author of books denying official accounts of events like 9/11, the Moon landing, and attacks by the German terrorist group RAF. Wisnewski gets shared by other German channels, creating a link between a reposter of Kremlin propaganda and German seekers of alternative viewpoints – for instance, former TV star Eva Herman has recently promoted Wisnewski’s new book and spread his post that electric vehicles are tools of surveillance.
Apart from sharing pro-Russian narratives regarding all sorts of topics, the German Telegram channels actively try to influence domestic politics ahead of upcoming elections. 33% of propaganda conduits’ content consisted of criticising current German leadership in various forms – liberal approach towards migrants, uneven taxation and social support system, pressuring freedom of speech in Germany, or abandoning relations with Russia. Similar content accounted for 47% of far-right channels’ feed, 28% – far-left, and 25% – for conspiracy channels.
German Telegram channels show a preference for AfD over other parties in the upcoming elections. Posts about AfD carry a noticeably more positive emotional tone compared to discussions of other parties among most clusters. Sentiment analysis, where 1 represents entirely positive comments and -1 – entirely negative, reveals that AfD is the only party that has either neutral or slightly positive coverage. Pro-Kremlin channels write in a relatively neutral tone about AfD (-0.01) compared to the SPD (-0.27), CDU (-0.34), and the Green Party (-0.46). Support for AfD is even stronger among far-right (0.27) and conspiracy (0.07) clusters. In contrast, sentiment towards mainstream parties remains consistently low at around -0.5. Here are examples of how these channels portray the parties leading in the opinion polls:
The grand narrative of all the channels is that German democracy is malfunctioning and it is high time to do something about it. This is where the representation of the candidates plays a big role, and Weidel is a popular heroine here. For example, one of the conduits, Carsten Jahn, constantly promotes Weidel, making tens of posts each week with coverage of her appearances in the media – accusing the critics of Weidel, praising her “Germany First” stance, and presenting Weidel as a true anti-system candidate.
One of the key themes in German Telegram channels is criticism of the current coalition’s taxation policies and social support system. The “old” parties such as the SPD and CDU are portrayed as incompetent and lacking clear goals, united only by opposition to the AfD. In the eyes of conduits, Scholz and his government are advocates of the inefficient distribution of taxes and “unfair two-class society”. On the other hand, Weidel’s program on cutting “unnecessary and inefficient” subsidies and taxes is perceived as one that will have a positive impact on Germany.
Another technique consists of discrediting other politicians, including the incumbent Chancellor Scholz compared to Weidel. One of the most recent examples include Wisnewski’s colleague, a conspiracy theorist Heiko Schöning, ironising on Germany's public broadcasting headlines about AfD’s isolation in the world. He listed Weidel’s recent visits to Orban and Austria’s right-wing MP Herbert Kickl, an invitation to Donald Trump’s inauguration and the meeting with JD Vance, highlighting that the latter “declined meeting with Scholz”. Another channel stated that Weidel “is smarter than all politicians” because she had predicted all the current issues in Germany ten years ago.
Overall, there is a strong link between pro-Kremlin narratives and support for AfD in German Telegram. These channels consistently undermine Germany’s mainstream parties while portraying AfD, particularly Alice Weidel, as the only viable solution to Germany’s problems. AfD’s agenda aligns closely with Russian interests, advocating for stronger ties with Moscow. Through coordinated messaging, these Telegram channels amplify distrust in German democracy, portraying AfD not just as an opposition party but as a force to completely reverse the existing system.
Our research encompassed the analysis of 410,000 messages from 244 German-language and Russian-language Telegram channels covering German politics, spanning from November 1, 2024, to February 4, 2025.
The selection of Telegram channels was formed using multiple strategies: based on TGStat statistics, keyword searches, Telegram's "similar channels" tool, and data on reposts between channels. This approach ensured broad coverage of various information sources. Using the Telegram API, we scraped the content of these Telegram channels, information about repost sources, and parsed data about 10 similar channels for each channel.
To categorize conduit channels, we applied the criterion of reposts or references to Russian media channels, organisations, and bloggers. In cases where the number of such connections was fewer than 5 during the study period, manual verification was conducted to exclude random coincidences.
Further classification of channels was carried out according to four main categories: Pro-Kremlin, Far-right, Far-left, and Conspiracy. Initial labelling was done manually and then verified using the GPT 4o-mini model with specially developed instructions detailing the characteristic features of each category. Far-right channels were identified by ultranationalist and xenophobic rhetoric, anti-immigration sentiments, and promotion of authoritarian values. Far-left channels were determined by anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist narratives, revolutionary ideas, and criticism of Western institutions from leftist positions. Conspiracy channels were characterized by the promotion of alternative explanations for world events, theories about secret societies and global elites, and anti-establishment rhetoric. Pro-Kremlin channels were identified by the promotion of Russian government positions, anti-Ukrainian content, and distorted coverage of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
To identify the main thematic clusters in the message array, we employed topic modelling. This machine learning method allowed us to discover patterns and group documents by content similarity. For each identified cluster, brief thematic summaries were generated using the GPT 4o-mini language model, providing the research team with an overview of the main discourse directions across all four research topics.
Sentiment analysis regarding German political parties was conducted based on filtered data containing mentions of key German politicians and parties. Using the GPT-4o-mini model, we extracted mention objects (specific parties or politicians) and determined the sentiment of statements. To validate the accuracy of this approach, 399 examples from the total array of 48,000 messages were manually verified, which at a 95% confidence level provided a statistical margin of error of ±3.89%. The overall accuracy of the model was 80.45%, with the F1-score ranging from 0.75 for negative assessments to 0.83 for neutral and positive ones. Analysis by individual parties demonstrated varying degrees of accuracy: from 77.19% for SPD and AfD to 85.96% for BSW. The main errors were associated with distinguishing between negative and neutral sentiment.
To account for the media's inherent negative bias, we developed a modified sentiment index where neutral mentions are weighted as moderately positive (0.6). This approach reflects that neutrality in polarised media often represents a conscious choice for balanced coverage. The sentiment index is calculated as (Positive + 0.6*Neutral - Negative) / (Positive + Negative + Neutral), acknowledging that the absence of negative coverage can be interpreted as a relatively positive signal.
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