Disinformation strategies in the Balkans, Venhari: Russia and Serbia use disinformation to attack Kosovo

Russia has developed a sophisticated disinformation strategy that uses various narratives to manipulate public opinion and spread its influence in the region, says Gynen Venhari, director of The Geopost. He focuses on the disinformation methodology used by Russia and Serbia against Kosovo and the Western Balkans and mentions three main narratives used by Russia to attack Kosovo.

The narrative of NATO bombing – in which Russia portrays the alliance as an anti-Serbian entity, Kosovo’s independence – which Russia tries to link to events such as Crimea and Ossetia, and visa liberalization – have been used to spread a tall tale about “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo are the main narratives on which Russia builds disinformation about our country, according to Venhari.

“The narratives of the Russians about the Western Balkans are different depending on the country, but there are some points that are common. If we focus on Kosovo, three mainly dominate; the first is the bombing of NATO, where they want to portray NATO as an anti-Serbian structure to be used by other countries. The second narrative that dominates in the Balkans is the independence of Kosovo, which they want to compare with Crimea, the case of Georgia with South Ossetia and now with the provinces conquered by Russian aggression in Ukraine, Donbass and other parts. While the new narrative that we have highlighted, especially after the new year, is that Kosovo will receive visa liberalization for entry into the Schengen area for the first time from January 1, this narrative is supported by [Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria ] Zakharova, in coordination with Russian Foreign Minister [Sergei] Lavrov, announced that there will be ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Kosovo using visa liberalization. This is not true, we have argued several times that the EU has been negotiating visa liberalization for ten years and that this has nothing to do with it.”

Venhari has announced that they are also introducing the element that Brussels and the Kosovo government are coordinated to carry out an ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Serbs. And, he says, this narrative will continue again and again until the media in Serbia, their Twitter and Telegram channels are over and finally the Serbian president used it in a televised debate. Venhari said that the main narrative since the Russian aggression in Ukraine was to use the element of Nazism, comparing some organizations there as well as Ukrainians to Nazis.

“The narrative against Ukrainians is quite prevalent in the portals and some media in Serbia like Informer and Alo, as well as in Sputnik of Serbia and RT Balkan, which is quite active.” The doctrine of the Russians is quite well structured and they have their own methodology and their basis is not the civil society that sometimes the West and the EU try to portray, sometimes the trolls of the Russians that come are not from the side of civil society,” he said on the occasion of the publication of the report on Russian narratives by hibrid.info. “Behind them are agents of Russian military or civilian intelligence, the GRU and the FSB. It’s state people who launch the attack and the narratives – that is, the Foreign Ministry launches them, mainly Zakharova, and they start with their comments their agitation and sharing on Twitter, a little less on Facebook because of the changes they made and the special focus is now Telegram,” he said.

Venhari also said, regarding the attempt of Russian influence in Kosovo, that the fate of Kosovo is that it is pro-Western with a large majority, and he said that we need to cultivate and protect this so that there are no elements, because in any society can have small elements that Russia uses with rather elegant finesse. Venhari said that in Serbia the case is different because the majority of the population is pro-Russian and the methodology has been developed there.

“The Russians’ greatest assets are people and positions, as in any hybrid war.” Therefore, positions are the most valuable assets they use. “There are quite a lot of them in Serbia, but also in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina and in other countries, in Bulgaria, where they are quite active,” he said. Venhari also spoke about the goals that Russia is aiming for in social networks to manipulate with a nationalism with elements and symbols of Albanians. “There are elements, there are bots that we have targeted specifically on Twitter, there are many Russian bots that have a typical Albanian nationalist background, with elements of Greater Albania and these factors that stimulate many debates among us.” This is one of the tactics they use. I hadn’t eliminated religion either, but we didn’t analyze that part in such detail. At these points they tend to introduce different elements,” he said.

Venhari said that Serbia is also imitating Russia in its joint fight for disinformation against Kosovo and vice versa. He criticizes Kosovo’s lack of a coordinated state strategy to combat disinformation and suggests that media and organizations fighting disinformation should receive more resources and support. He offers the model of “The Geopost” as a possible example to counteract this phenomenon by reporting in several languages, including Albanian, Serbian, English and Ukrainian

/TheGeopost