This article is being co-published with our editorial partner World Policy Journal.

Last fall, a prominent right-wing Russian newspaper called “Zavtra” published a fictional story about an underground movement supposedly conspiring to get Vladimir Putin elected as Germany’s next chancellor. It was just a few days before the country went to the polls for parliamentary elections, with their real chancellor, Angela Merkel, facing unprecedented threats from the radical right as she bid for her fourth term.

The inspiration for Zavtra’s piece seems to have come from a report on a Swedish right-wing site, which claimed that posters had appeared in the German capital, Berlin, with the slogan “Vote Putin For Chancellor.” But upon closer examination, it was clear that the photo used in the report had been doctored — and the posters themselves may not even have physically existed.

It looked like a textbook case of online misinformation — an attempt to spread a contentious claim that could be easily exposed as fake, but which nonetheless stirred debate, creating the impression it might be true simply because it had been published.