Did German Chancellor Friedrich Merz use $550 million of state funds to build a private "doomsday" plane? No, that's not true: There is no credible evidence or proof that Merz commissioned a fortified warplane. The website that published the article was registered one day before the publication of the story and is not an established media organization. An online detection tool rated the video included in the post as likely generated by AI.
The claim appeared in a March 18, 2026, post on X account @SprinterPress (archived here). It opened:
Allegations suggest Merz is using German state funds to turn a Boeing 747 into a fortified air refuge for himself and his associates, as precaution against a potential global nuclear war from events such as the attack on Iran.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @SprinterPress on X.)
The post links to an article titled "Merz's new DOOMSDAY Plane," on the website Euinfo.net (archived here), which is not an established news outlet. The web domain was registered on March 17, 2026, one day before the publication of the story, as this screenshot shows:
The article described the commission as having 'reportedly' taken place, but the article did not identify where the information was originally reported:
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has reportedly purchased a used Boeing 747 and begun converting it into a "doomsday plane" in response to rising global tensions and the ongoing war in the Middle East.
Such an extravagant commission, especially using $550 million of public funds, would be major news. Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo! News (archived here) and did not find any matching reports.
The byline on the article is "Philippe Jacqué," but a search of the site (archived here) shows this is the author's only article published there. Philippe Jacqué is the name of a reporter at French news outlet Le Monde -- an unlikely contributor to Euinfo.net.
The Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection tool concluded the video was "likely to be AI-Generated" with an aggregated score of 99.9%. The higher the score, the greater the AI content:
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Russian disinformation
The video appears similar to previous videos described by experts as being part of Russian-backed propaganda campaigns dubbed "Storm-1516" and "Matryoshka" (archived here). These videos target Western leaders with allegations of corruption and personal enrichment. They include a voiceover rather than a real human narrator on screen, appearing to impersonate or fabricate a real news outlet. Lead Stories debunked a similar claim that a report showed Germany is preparing to take in 400,000 Palestinian refugees.
The Russian disinformation campaign was exposed in an October 2024 report (archived here) by Clemson University's Media Forensics Hub on people behind the Russian disinformation campaign called Storm-1516. The campaign spread numerous high-profile hoaxes targeting Democratic candidates in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims concerning Storm-1516 can be found here.
