As of: February 26, 2024, 7:19 p.m
By: Victoria Krumbeck
Comments
Press
Split
Documents from the Kremlin show efforts to manipulate the results before the elections.
A supplementary budget covers the costs.
Moscow – The presidential elections will take place in Russia in March.
The re-election of Vladimir Putin, who has been in the Kremlin since 2000 with a brief interruption, is certain.
This is also due to the lack of a realistic opponent.
Most recently, the candidacy of Russian opposition figure Boris Nadezhdin was rejected.
According to leaked documents, the Kremlin is expected to invest hundreds of millions of euros in influencing voters in the run-up to the elections.
Document leak shows: Russia manipulates elections in advance
The documents, including budgets, Excel spreadsheets, strategy papers and presentations from the Russian presidential administration, were leaked to the Estonian medium
Delfi
.
They shared the data, which comes from the period 2020 to 2023, with
Spiegel
and
ZDF
as well as with other foreign media.
The documents show how the Russian population is influenced and manipulated.
Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to run for re-election in March 2024.
The Kremlin is spending millions in advance.
© Sergei Ilyin/Kremlin Pool/dpa
As Der
Spiegel
writes, the focus of the influence is on three projects: the presidential elections, the so-called “information and ideological war” and the “New Regions,” as the annexed Ukrainian territories are called.
According to the documents, the Kremlin wants to spend 1.1 billion euros on this.
The documents come from Sergei Kiriyenko's area of responsibility.
He is considered a confidant of Putin and has been on the European Union sanctions list since the poison attack on the recently deceased Alexei Navalny.
Before the presidential elections: millions of euros for Russia propaganda
The money was approved in a supplementary budget.
To influence the elections, the organization “Institute for Internet Development” (IRI) will be supported with the equivalent of 179 million euros in 2024, as
ZDF
writes.
The IRI was helped to establish and finance.
Since 2020, on Moscow's instructions, it has been coordinating the production of “content for the intellectual and moral education of young people”.
This also includes the production of a new Russian series called “DDR”, which revolves around a Soviet agent working in West Berlin.
It is no coincidence that the series appeared a few weeks before the Russian elections.
The main character, who protects Russia in the series, is very reminiscent of the former KGB agent Putin.
Election manipulation in Russian-occupied territories: “targeted advertising”
In the area of information and ideological warfare, around 69 million euros will flow to the “Dialogue Regions” organization.
As the secret documents show, this association is intended to take care of “targeted advertising” and “important analytical products for election preparation” in the occupied territories.
In addition, “regional administrative centers” are to be set up in the areas occupied by Russia.
My news
Russia openly threatens to shoot down NATO jets – read “return of particularly aggressive attitude”.
Did Russia shoot down its own planes?
Ukraine is said to have outsmarted Russian anti-aircraft defenses
1 hour ago
“You can actually only die” – this is how cruelly the torture is carried out in the “Polar Wolf” Navalny prison camp
“The best armored personnel carriers of the war”: Ukraine gets a weapon with “high-tech features” read
Ukraine changes tactics in war with Russia read
Escaped from military service: conscientious objectors find protection in Germanyread
In addition, according to the leaks, money is being provided to youth centers, scholarships and organizations that are intended to provide young people with “patriotic education” or even military skills.
The population in the territories annexed by Russia is also expected to take part in the presidential elections in March.
Russia spends millions on election campaign: “Minimize election manipulation on election days”
Another document describes how the occupied territories should be monitored.
Software that monitors at least 85 percent of all social media profiles should help,
Spiegel
quotes the documents as saying.
The goal is to “inform about emerging threats and new destructive phenomena” at an early stage.
An additional €10 million is available to “counter the spread of prohibited information” and block prohibited content in the territories.
All of the Kremlin's preliminary efforts leave open the question of why so much money is being invested when the outcome of the elections is already presumptively certain.
“In some ways there is an attempt to minimize election manipulation on election days through what could be called pre-manipulation,” historian and Russia expert Mark Galeotti said of the leaked documents.
This would keep the gap between the real result and the announced result as small as possible.
(vk)