“RT Balkan” disinforms about Finland’s accession to NATO

Russia’s propaganda media outlet “Russia Today Balkan” (RT Balkan), which operates unhindered in Serbia despite being banned throughout the Western world, has spread a series of disinformation about Finland’s membership in NATO, linking it to the Recak massacre without any logical sense. In an article published on March 11, RT Balkan falsely writes that Finland benefited from NATO membership by covering up the Recak massacre in Kosovo.

What did RT Balkan write?

“How Finland won over NATO: They hid the truth about Recak and helped bomb Yugoslavia,” reads the headline in Russian state media. He then continues: “Finland supported the bombing of Yugoslavia by concealing the forensic reports of the medical team responsible for Recak.” The forensic team found that none of Recak’s Albanians were shot at close range and that most likely all of them were killed in action. The conclusions were delayed because the ground was being prepared for the bombing of your country to begin.”

Analysis:

Finland’s membership of NATO was a consequence of Putin’s war in Ukraine, which endangered Finland itself, which lies on the border with Russia. Finland’s formal accession to NATO was the culmination of an eleven-month membership path initiated after Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022. The vast majority of Finns supported their country’s NATO membership, and many toasts were made to it in early spring. Finland officially joined the Western defense alliance in April with the aim of strengthening its defense against the Russian threat. The reason the Finns were in favor of NATO membership was that Vladimir Putin was destroying a long sense of stability in Northern Europe, leaving Sweden and Finland feeling vulnerable. For many Finns, the war brought with it a terrible sense of familiarity. Finland has a 1,340-kilometer border with Russia.

For Recak, RT Balkans said the opposite of what the world already knows. In January 1999, Slobodan Milosevic’s criminal forces massacred 45 Kosovo Albanian civilians. The killings were investigated by two separate forensic teams, the first a joint Yugoslav-Belarusian team and the second an external Finnish team representing the EU. The first team report, commissioned by the Yugoslav government, concluded that those killed, including a woman and a 12-year-old child, were all separatist guerrillas and not civilians. The findings of the second team strongly contradicted the Yugoslav investigation report, which found that the deaths involved the killing of unarmed civilians. The lead Finnish researcher and anthropology expert Dr. Helena Ranta called it a “crime against humanity”. The media that reported it most clearly described the event in Recak as a horrific terrorist atrocity by a repressive Serbian government./G.Venhar-The Geopost/