Mokliak: Serbia’s hybrid war involves cooperation with the Russian embassy, ​​Vulin – the biggest asset of Russian intelligence

Russian aggression is multi-dimensional and multi-faceted, and Alexander Vulin could potentially be the greatest asset of Russian intelligence. This is what Taras Mokliak, observer of the Guildhall news agency, says in an interview for The Geopost, while adding that Serbia uses models similar to Russia to carry out hybrid operations.

Serbia’s hybrid war, he says, includes the strong ties of Serbian political parties to the Russian embassy, ​​as well as extremist organizations and football ultras that support Russian narratives, especially those against the EU process for settling the situation in Kosovo.

“A significant part of the Serbian opposition political parties have strong ties with the Russian embassy”, he says among other things.

According to him, the group of ultras of Partizan and Crvena Zvezda have direct links with the Russian secret services and are involved in efforts to destabilize the region, demanding the return of Kosovo under Serbia.

 Full interview:

Mokliak: First of all, I would like to say that disinformation is only one tool which Russians are using within their hybrid aggression, both against Ukraine and against West. The nature of this hybrid warfare is that its multidimensional aggression conducted by non-military means, that’s why we call it hybrid aggression. And the second thing about the nature of this hybrid warfare is that it affects all areas of public life, both in Ukraine and on the West. Again, it’s about politics, civil society, cultural area, church, of course, religion, sport, everything which Russians could use to affect in a hybrid way Ukraine or our Western partners, including Kosovo, they are using. And of course, media and disinformation are one of the main tools which Russians are using.

Speaking about the narratives and the disinformation operations which are ongoing right now, for instance in Ukraine, I will mention one which I believe plays a significant role. Its narrative says that West has betrayed Ukraine. This narrative includes a lot of messages, so that’s how they work. They have the main narrative and then they have the message box which supports the main narrative. Speaking about this narrative, “the West has betrayed Ukraine”, Russians use a lot of narratives, the lack of the weaponry aid, unreadiness of the West to provide Ukraine the invitation to NATO, indecisiveness of our European and American partners in providing Ukrainian security guarantees or even permission to use Western weaponry on Russian territory. So, all these messages support this narrative that the West has betrayed Ukraine. This is one of the most massive operation, disinformation operation, which is ongoing right now in Ukrainian society. But very quickly I would like to mention one thing about our approach when we fight this disinformation operation. The common approach today both in Ukraine and EU unfortunately is to focus on the narrative which Russians are using or to focus on the message which Russians are using and to try to convince the society that this is the fake message, that this is the wrong narrative and so on.

I believe this is a wrong approach. Why? Because the narrative itself is a tool. Disinformation itself is a tool. Message, fake message or real message is only the tool of disinformation operation. But what we should be interested in instead of fighting narratives is the final goal of this disinformation operation. Because when Russians are planning and conducting their operations according both to the Soviet school of Soviet intelligence and modern Russian school, they use the narrative to achieve the goal. That’s why when we are fighting disinformation, we must first put the hypothesis of the final goal of each specific operation and develop the strategy, our strategy, how should we oppose achieving that goal by Russian secret services.

To summarize about this specific operation which uses this narrative that the West has betrayed Ukraine. My personal point of view is that the final goal of this operation is to push Ukraine to freeze the conflict on Russian conditions. Is to push Ukrainian society to accept Russian terms for freezing the conflict. So, I believe that our strategy to fight this operation should be focused on fighting that final goal.

The Geopost: Serbia is basing its propaganda and disinformation operations in Balkans on Russian models; can you tell us about this parallel operation in Balkans?

Mokliak: What is the main feature of any hybrid operation? It’s infrastructure. As Russians call it, “Pozicii”, positions. Russians have built widespread infrastructure for conducting hybrid operations in Serbia. This infrastructure includes political parties, civil society representatives, football ultras, and others. For instance, the significant part of Serbian opposition political parties has strong ties with Russian embassy. Some of those political parties even had agreements with Putin’s party, United Russia. If we speak about far-right and extremist groups such as “Serbska Aktsiya” or “Club 451” and some other, they have really strong connections with Russian military intelligence, some of them have also smaller partners in Serbia. If we speak about civil society, other organizations, they also have these ties. And what do we see regarding Kosovo? All these organizations, including the organizations which I have mentioned, are opposing EU initiative on regulating Kosovo situation. The last example is Serbian football ultras of football club Partizan and football club Crvena Zvezda. Both those ultras’ groups have their ties with Russia. Ultras of football club Partizan has connections to GRU unit 29155. They were involved, for instance, in the attempt to destabilize Moldova by this GRU unit, but they were blocked by Moldova’s law enforcement to enter Moldova. But it was exposed, actually, that they were a part of this operation and this intent of Russian secret services to destabilize Moldova. And the other football club Ultras, Crvena Zvezda, they have very close and tight relations with Moscow Spartak Ultras, who are under control of Russian secret services themselves. And what do we see? Both these groups, I use these Ultras as an example, but we can see such examples on the political level, on civil society level, on far-right extremist groups level. But speaking about these ultras, they are demanding “Kosovo and Metohija” to go back to Serbia. So, their narrative, Kosovo is Serbia. Their narrative, Metohija is Serbia. Usually, they use more radical narratives such as we will come and solve as they say Kosovo issue, including claims to use force to solve as they say Kosovo issue. But we should ask ourselves, what are the goals behind this narrative? I personally think that the goal is definitely to undermine the European Union process of regulating Kosovo’s situation and to provoke bilateral contradictions and bilateral problems between Kosovo and Serbia. And if Russians will be succeeded, they will provoke local destabilization here again, this is their intent. We see that our Western partners have a much stricter position towards Kosovo, thankful to them, than towards Ukraine.

So, speaking about Vulin and his position, of course he can pretend to be independent Serbian politician, but a number of his ties and connection to Kremlin does not allow us to say and to pretend that this is about freedom of speech. We use in Ukraine, when we track such people, specific methodology which allows us to measure the risk that each specific individual or each specific organization could be potentially the agent of influence of any specific organization. It allows us to avoid being blamed in a witch hunt and this methodology is based on partially American experience of applying FARA anti-lobbying legislation and some our personal developments on this field. So, to sum up about Vulin, the potential of risk that this individual is an agent of influence of Russian secret services is very high. So according to our methodology, the potential risk that Vulin is potentially the Russian asset of Russian intelligence is the highest among all possible indexes in our methodology and we can see his activities for instance during last environmental protests when Vulin blamed the West and specifically EU if I’m not mistaken, in an attempt to provoke the revolution and destabilization in Serbia. But excuse me, Mr. Vulin, why should EU undermine its own agreement with Serbia? It’s completely un-logical, but when we see official Kremlin position towards this matter, what Zakharova stated, it’s the same what Vulin stated.

The Geopost: What is your message for the organizations and journalists who are working in the Balkans to fight this Russian influence?

Mokliak: First, we have to understand the nature of Russian hybrid warfare, it’s offensive activities. The second thing, speaking about the nature, is that it’s not Russian civil society behind this hybrid warfare. We are dealing with Russian secret services, who are, despite not that super-efficient in a conventional military warfare, they are extremely efficient in unconventional and hybrid warfare activities. So, after realizing the nature of this hybrid aggression, offensive nature conducted by Russian intelligence and secret services, my message to Balkan civil society is to start learning Soviet school of subversive activities, school of Soviet intelligence, to understand the methodology which they have been using during the Soviet period and which they are using right now during the modern Russia. After we will understand the methodology which Russians are using, we can develop our correct approach to tackle the methodology Russians are using.

So, this is my key message and to sum up again speaking about hybrid operations we should focus on the final goal of that operation, not on the tools which are narratives or disinformation itself it’s just a tool but on the final goal. After that, we will become able to undermine Russian intent to weaken and to overcome our countries and our way of life.

/The Geopost