Did Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a German right wing party produce a TV advert making mockery of Germany for supporting Ukraine? No, that's not true: There is strong evidence that the video was produced by Russia.
The alleged advert appeared in a TikTok video (archived here) where it was published by @usseal2222 on 28th of July, 2023 with the title, translated from Hungarian to English be Lead Stories staff:
Germany 2023. Video of AFD (right wing party). Perfect.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Aug 7 16:29:57 2023 UTC)
The alleged German advert shows a German family whose home is invaded by a military unit that empties the flat, confiscates everything including the earrings of the mother, hangs a picture of the Ukrainian president on the wall and shouts "Heil Zelensky." In the end, the video notes that since 2022 22 billion EUR has been given to Ukraine from Germany's budget.
Lead Stories reached out to AfD to ask if the video was produced by the party. The answer of AfD was that "the Alternative for Germany is not the author of the video."
The opening picture of the video is a photo available on a stock photo website, it was made in a German town, Rhodt unter Rietburg.
Radio Free Europe's (RFE/RL) Russian service managed to identify four of the actors appearing in the video, they are all Russians according to RFE:
Russian Telegram channels spread what they say is German AfD party 'social advertising', mocking the govt support for Ukraine. The problem is that Russian professional film actors are filmed in it, like this guy, Igor Alexeev (https://t.co/16gB6JGnNJ) https://t.co/MInrzlhvPH pic.twitter.com/DMYiIlszoL
-- Mark Krutov (@kromark) July 26, 2023
