Klingova: Pro-Kremlin narratives threaten democracy in Slovakia and the region

Disinformation is becoming one of the biggest challenges to democracy and political stability, while the spread of polarizing narratives is being carried out by Slovak and regional leaders, says Katarina Klingova, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Sustainability at the GLOBSEC Policy Institute.

In an interview with The Geopost, Klingova emphasizes that such narratives benefit the Kremlin, while underlining that it is important to understand how these phenomena affect different countries and what are the mechanisms to combat them.

She talks about the situation in Slovakia, interference in electoral processes, the narratives that are spreading in the region, the spread of fear, the manipulation of information and attacks on democratic institutions, comparing these developments with the situation in the Western Balkans.

Full interview:

The Geopost: Can you tell us about the disinformation situation in Slovakia now, and about interfering in the last election and now?

Klingova: So one of the observed trends when it comes to information operation or spreading polarizing narratives in Slovakia is that while in 2016, 2015, those kind of narratives were being spread by actors at the edge of the information landscape, at the edge of the political landscape, now they’re basically being voiced by mainstream political leaders, including people that are in our parliament and government and often times they’re further amplified by various disinformation outlets in Slovakia that have direct connections to the Kremlin or definitely spread narratives that are benefiting the Kremlin not only in Slovakia but wider region spreading a lot of narratives that are undermining the war in Ukraine, undermining the support of Slovakia or European Union or NATO in Ukraine, spreading narratives that if people are going to vote for this and that political representative or political party, if they win the elections then Slovakia will be dragged into the war and the sons and husbands of Slovak women are going to be sent into the battlefield. So there’s a lot of mutualization of fear, creation of enemies when they’re not, a lot of antagonization of various societal groups, people who have more liberal political views, a lot of smear attacks and attacks against civil society representatives and also investigative journalists.

The Geopost: Have you found and followed new narratives of, as you said, attacking from Central Europe and also in the Balkans, which is a new narrative that they have used?

Klingova: There are lots of lots of narratives that are being disseminated. The latest thing that is kind of new and recently being spread in Slovakia is the fact that the anti-governmental protests that are happening almost biweekly in several cities in Slovakia are being organized by organizers of Euromaidan or revolutions in Georgia. There has been attempts to say that the leader of Georgian Legion in Ukraine came to Slovakia and is organizing basically coup d’etat. Now a lot of times what we’re observing is that when there are some cyber attacks being conducted in Slovakia against our institutions or when there are some bomb threats, which was, I mean, they were widespread, especially in the beginning of the school year. And there was a week where you had bomb threats being announced at several schools all around Slovakia. There’s a trend to eventually blame the Ukrainians for these activities. While, for example, when it comes to the similar activities that are being observed in Czech Republic, usually the Czech Intelligence Service says that it’s the Kremlin or people somehow connected to the Kremlin that are behind such high-range attacks.

The Geopost: You know, the situation from European and Slovak perspective, obviously the situation in the Balkans, which is your message for us, all of us, how to fight all this disinformation because we are not in NATO and not in EU yet.

Klingova: The message is the same as it’s for us. You know, a lot of our vulnerabilities that are being utilized by the malign actors, whether they’re domestic or foreign, are there because we enable them. So we need to patch our own vulnerabilities. We need to do our own homework and understand that if we enable, if we do not enforce our existing laws, if we do not stand up for the truth, then there are going to be various malign actors that are going to utilize that. So we need to do that as a homework. Another thing is we need to understand, both in Central Europe and Western Balkan, that building resilience is a long-term solution. It takes time and it takes effort of all the actors within society. It’s not only a burden of public administration, but it should actively involve journalists, media, civil society organizations and researchers. And of course, the structures enabling those kind of policies and those kind of cooperation needs to be established. It shouldn’t be only whole of government, but it should be whole of society because every individual, whether it’s a civil servant working in a government or individual as you and me, can contribute to the resilience building of our own respective countries. What we can do better is to exchange know-how on best practices, exchange know-how on absurd information operations because a lot of things are happening that are similar, a lot of things are happening at the same time. So we should be getting better situational awareness, not only what’s happening in respective Western Balkan countries, but what’s happening on the broader landscape. And that’s why it’s very great that you organize the conference and brought very interesting stakeholders today so that we can exchange that and foster that exchange of know-how.

/The Geopost