Putin aims to use Serbian filmmaker for propaganda, invites him to a meeting

Serbian director Emir Kusturica met with Russian President Vladimir Putin a few days ago.

The Serbian director is known for his public statements in which he supports every action Putin takes in Ukraine.

During the conversation with the Russian president, Kusturica made a comparison between what he called the Croatian "Ustasha" and the Ukrainian "Banders", while Putin without hesitation admitted that such a comparison was legitimate and stated that Kusturica's assessment of the events in Ukraine coincided with his own assessment and that the events in Serbia and Ukraine are very similar.

"Your assessments today, including the tragic events in Ukraine and the analogy with the events in Yugoslavia during World War II, fully coincide with mine. What happened then in Serbia and what is happening now between Russia and Ukraine – the glorification, the elevation to a pedestal of fascist elements of the past, giving them a new life today – are very similar phenomena," the Russian president said.

Kusturica went to ask Putin for money.

Srecko Djukic, a member of the Forum for International Relations, says that Kusturica was connected to Moscow “for reasons known to him,” but that he gained fame in the SFRY and the West – not in the USSR.

"So, precisely about the denial of Soviet socialism. If it is true that both Putin and Kusturica have agreed that the events in Serbia and Ukraine are very similar and that we in the Republic of Serbia are facing a dark war, we can guess who will attack us," he says.

They, Djukic adds, remained undefined when it comes to who in Serbia is promoting and looking down on the vampirized "fascist elements" in Serbia and who is rehabilitating them.

"Kusturica came to Putin's representative office in the Kremlin to ask for money to end his career with a new film."

Putin created a new 21st century totalitarianism

Boris Varga, a political scientist and journalist, says that Putin has no choice but to convince the whole world of the correctness of his actions with "brutal propaganda and fake news."

“By constructing the “Russian world,” he obsessively interprets everywhere his version of history, his personal fight against “fascism.” Thanks to that fight against “fascism” and “denazification,” and for him it is clearly a fight against the West, Putin created a new totalitarianism of the 21st century,” says Varga.

However, he says, there are few global fighters for justice who believe in the Russian Tsar, while his hands are bloody from Ukraine.

"There are also those who fell into the trap of the Russian intelligence out of perhaps sincere but naive beliefs. But there are mostly those who, for purely profitable and financial reasons, accepted that kind of reality and agreed to be at the court of the new bloodthirsty emperor. Where is Emir Kusturica, we will find out," Varga emphasizes.

Varga emphasizes that "it is certain that Kusturica sees free-thinking and creative Russians fleeing Russia for the first time in history," who, he says, began to be persecuted and eliminated by Putin even before the war in Ukraine.

"Even the so-called "Global South," on whose behalf Putin often tries to speak, is aware of the Russian president's disastrous policy, but the same countries consider it beneficial," says our interlocutor, writes RKS News.

Unfortunately, he adds, the dominant narrative in Serbian media is that an extension of “NATO aggression” is taking place in Ukraine, against which Russia is “only defending itself.”

"Due to the failure to confront the recent past, the crimes committed in the name of the great Serbian idea in the wars of the 90s, and the disappointment of defeat, such an interpretation will be present in the public media and in the political discourse of Serbia for another time," says Varga, adding that for this reason, "the Serbian audience will be fertile ground for Russian war propaganda and Serbian society in conflict with the West."

Earlier, the Serbian director publicly supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine. According to him, this was a necessary measure in response to "Western aggression", which aims to "wipe Russians off the map". /TheGeopost/