Germany blames Russia for cyberattack on air safety, election interference

The German Foreign Ministry stated it could 'state definitively' that Russia, through the Storm-1516 campaign, sought to influence and destabilize the February 2025 federal election: a GRU-supported Moscow think tank spread AI-generated and deepfake content targeting Friedrich Merz, Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, including fabricated claims that the AfD had been left off postal ballots in Leipzig and that votes for the party were destroyed in Hamburg — both debunked by AFP's German fact-check service. The Russian ambassador was summoned in protest.