Stories of a pre-election state of emergency, police escorts for toddlers and forged ballot papers -- a blizzard of online disinformation has targeted German voters ahead of Sunday's election.

Russia has been the main suspect, and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) the main beneficiary, says Berlin.

On top of all that, Trump ally Elon Musk has weighed in, insulting German political leaders and strongly backing the Moscow-friendly AfD, mainly via his social media platform X.

Pointing directly to Russia at a time of soaring tensions over the Ukraine war, Germany on Friday said it had detected attempts to meddle in the campaign.

"The goal of these influence operations is to destroy confidence in democracy, to question the integrity of the electoral process," said interior ministry spokesman Maximilian Kall.

Security officials had reason to suspect the Kremlin-linked Storm-1516 network was behind some of the online campaigns, he told a Berlin news conference.

But Kall stressed that "the free electoral process in Germany is guaranteed, and we will continue to promptly refute relevant misinformation".

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