American analyst Stradner: Russia is using Serbia to distract the West, this is a continuation of efforts from the last decade

Russia is using the Balkans to distract the West from its military aggression in Ukraine, and the best way to do this is by using internal proxies [Serbia] in the region to constantly stay on the brink of conflict or chaos.

This is what the American analyst Ivana Stradner claims in an interview for The Geopost, adding that this is the continuation of the efforts of the Russian Federation from the last decade.

“Russia has very close ties with Serbia, Republika Srpska, for example, and countries that depend on Russian gas. Russia has also invested heavily in supporting the Serbian Orthodox Church, using the typical narrative of Slavic Brotherhood and Orthodox Christianity,” claims Stradner.

“This is really nothing new, just a continuation of Russia’s efforts over the last decade, but the reason why the West is a little nervous now is the war in Ukraine,” she adds.

According to her, Russia has invested a lot in the information space through trolls and bots to polarize the Balkans.

“What we are currently seeing in the information space is that Russia has invested a lot of resources in Telegram and other social media, on Twitter, on Facebook, using trolls and bots to further polarize the Balkans, their narratives about the country of Ukraine and to ignite the region even more”, emphasizes Stradner.

The journalist further explains that President Vucic’s goal is to stay in power for a long time through crises in the region, which is the same strategy that Russia uses.

“Vucic’s main objective is to stay in power and he has adopted this tactic of balancing East and West, that is to support China and then Russia, then the European Union and then the United States at the same time,” explains the American journalist.

“His goal is always to portray himself as a source of stability and how does he do that? By always letting things escalate in the region and then presenting himself as someone who can solve the problem through mediation. A similar strategy is actually for Russia,” she concludes.

In this interview, Stradner also talked about the Russian military aggression in Ukraine and the final agreement between Kosovo and Serbia.

Full interview below:

TheGeopost: Can you please comment the aggression in Ukraine and how do you see the Russian influence in Europe and Balkans?

The war started not last year in 2022, the war started actually all the way back in 2014, and what Putin had in mind on February 24^th when he attacked the Ukrainian capital Kyiv as well as Kharkov, he had an attempt actually to overthrow the government within three days, which was the goal. But apparently he did not succeed because Ukraine was really, really fighting very hard since then.

Over the past one year we see horrible war crimes done by the Russian forces in the war, we see tens of thousands of people who have been killed, many of Ukrainians who have fled the country, but never the last, what we see almost one year later is that Vladimir Putin has managed to unite the west, that is helping Ukraine.

Ukraine managed to retrieve some territory that was taken by Russia, we are providing Ukraine with weapons, just recently we sent HIMARS and Patriot systems and now even some European countries are planning to send tanks, which will be tremendously important for this upcoming spring for Ukraine to win.

So, whoever thinks that Ukraine is losing, that is not true, because Ukraine with the help of the west, regardless of all those horrible atrocities happening there Ukraine is able to fight. What Vladimir Putin wants to see, he wants to see a protracted war, but what we see here is that Russia will suffer tremendously, economically within the coming months.

Russian military is not performing as everyone thought they would perform in Ukraine, and what we need to do right now is to continue to support Ukraine and not to allow Russia to dictate the terms of negotiations because what he wants to do right now is to engage in negotiations and basically to buy time to regroup, because he do not plan to give up on Ukraine and right now is the right time really to continue to support Ukraine.

But I would emphasize one other thing, we are almost reaching one year since the last year invasion, and Russia also had different goals within Europe, to divide Europe even more, to also influence tremendously African countries as well as places in Latin America.

Indeed, Russia has been using also information operations in Africa to portray United States as the aggressor and responsible for this war and to blame the west for the food crisis in Africa. And when it comes to the rest of the Europe, they were also weaponizing refugees with that, and the Balkans also comes within the very same scope where Russia has had his own goals that we can talk about later, but one thing that I will say is that, given that Ukraine is doing quite well, as long as Ukraine is doing well, we will not see any serious conflict in the region, so we should all be grateful for Ukraine’s efforts.

TheGeopost: Kosovo has continuously made efforts to support Ukraine, deconstructing Russian intentions? What more can Kosovo do?

Certainly Kosovo has done a lot of support for Ukraine, not only in words but also in deeds and also because they share similar history in terms of the war. What Ukraine really does need now is certainly support in terms of military and intelligence, but there are also the limits what places in the Balkans can’t do, but what Balkans can do, they can certainly help with the support of Ukraine diplomatically and internationally by condemning Russian atrocities and Russian actions in Ukraine. But when it comes to the Balkans, as I mentioned, this is all part of the same bigger picture and bigger goal that Russia has had prior to the invasion in 2022. What countries in the region need to do, they really need to stay united in to fight together against Russian influence in the region that is unfortunately quite impactful and efficient.

TheGeopost: Serbia is still being pampered by the West, despite being an ally of Russia and playing warmongering in the Balkans, intervening in Montenegro, as well as tolerating Dodik in Bosnia and Herzegovina. How do you see this?

Let me tell you what Russian goals are in the Balkans; Russia does not plan to occupy the Balkans, rolling down the tanks and jets in the region, they do not need to do that because Russia has been investing tremendously in influence operations in the Balkans, at least for a decade. Russia has nah very close ties with Serbia, with Republika Srpska for example, also with countries that depend on Russian gas. Russia has also invested tremendously in support of the Orthodox Church using the typical narrative regarding the Slavic brotherhood and orthodox Christianity. Russia has also had invested tremendous resources in Montenegro, also because Montenegro has access to the Adriatic sea and let’s not forget that Russia also tried to overthrow a regime over there prior to their joining NATO.

So, this is what we see right now in the Balkans, this is really nothing new, just the continuation of Russia’s efforts over the past one decade, but the reason why the west is little bit nervous right now, it is because of the war in Ukraine.

And you just mentioned pampering of the west, the thing is, when we think about Serbia in particular, we need to think about Russia’s goal but also Vucic’s goals, so the main goal of the president Vucic is to remain in power and he has been engaged in this tactic of balancing between East and the West, so, at the same time to support China and then Russia, then European Union and then United States. So, his goal is always to project himself as a source of stability, and how do it? By always escalating things in the region and then portraying himself as someone who can solve the problem by mediating. The same thing, a similar strategy is actually for Russia. So, Russia wants to use the Balkans to distract the west from its aggression in Ukraine and the best way to do it is to use internal proxies in the region to constantly be on the verge of the conflict or a verge of the chaos and then portray itself as a mediator and to say, Russia can solve this issue Europe, but then to make concessions regarding the Ukraine. And the west should not fall for this trick, because that is a well-known strategy that Russia has been using in its own region.

What we see right now in the information space is that Russia has invested a lot of resources on Telegram and other social media, on Twitter, on Facebook, using troll bot farms to polarize the Balkan further, to put their narratives regarding Ukraine and to inflame the region even more. We all know that the region, given different ethnic tensions and different religious differences has always been easy to be triggered, so Russia knows how to inflame the region and this is why I cannot emphasize enough that the west should pay attention to influence operations over there, because information warfare is a critical part Russia’s military strategy.

There are numerous offensive and defensive information operations that the west along with its partners in the Balkans should do. I’m afraid that all those influence operations that are tied to different cyber-attacks, so we can expect more and more asymmetric use of force in the region. As of today, I do not see any major conflict that we saw like the ones during the nineties, but what I’m confident to say, they will continue all those sorts of escalating then de-escalating tensions in the region what we see right now in Kosovo, what happened in Bosnia’s Republika Srpska, Montenegro is also very, very fragile. So, all those places are places that need to get additional attention from the west, but not at the expense of Ukraine, because that is exactly what Russia wants.

TheGeopost: Do you think there will be an agreement between Kosovo and Serbia soon? What is the American role here?

I do not see any time soon that Kosovo and Serbia will find a mutual language, and the reason for that is, as I mentioned right before this, that the president of Serbia and the Serbian government in particular, they also have their own interests with unresolved issues with Kosovo, because they use Kosovo for their own political purposes to escalate then de-escalate the crisis. Let me just give you an example, whenever there is an internal problem within the country, they use regional differences and regional problems to escalate and then to put it in Serbian news as the core information on that day, so, just recently when there was ammonia leak in Serbia that harmed many people, on the very same night they ramped up the tensions regarding the barricades and road blocks and put at information space as number one news.

So, when we think about this particular crisis, we need to think also about internal incentives how to solve this crisis. In terms of mutual recognition, I don’t think that is going to happen any time soon as we are speaking today, and the role of the United States after many, many years of European Union trying to immediate dialog between Kosovo and Serbia, united states stepped in and they are trying to find a solution that is in their view more practical, but as I mentioned, because of some internal interests, I do not see that this is going to end any time soon, I do not see that this is going to escalate in any serious war, however, what I mentioned, this is going to certainly continue to escalate and then to de-escalate whenever internal actors need that for their reasons, and plus, in addition to that, we have also the role of Russia and how they are using the information space, especially on Telegram, using Russian channels and Russian proxies to inflame this crisis and to make sure there is actually more tensions in the regions, because Moscow has its own incentives to have a destabilized Balkans. /The Geopost/