Professor Iztok Prezelj: Balkans influenced by external powers, Serbia serves as an entry point for Russia

Russia uses its media in Serbia to shape public opinion and influence the political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, especially among Serbs and Albanians, says in an interview with The Geopost, university professor in Slovenia, Iztok Prezelj. In a period where the security and integration of the Western Balkans remain among the most sensitive and challenging issues, Prezelj emphasizes the importance of combating disinformation and strengthening democracy.

He also says that Slovenia, as a member of the European Union and NATO, has played an important role in supporting the integration of the Western Balkan countries into Western institutions.

As one of the main organizers, Professor Prezelj also speaks about the “Balkan SAYS” conference (Youth Seminar on Security Architecture), which was held in Slovenia, as a point of reference for young people and future leaders of the region.

Full interview:

The Geopost: Professor, thank you so much for this interview with The Geopost. You held a great conference last week, Balkan SAYS. Could you tell us a little about its impact and organization?

Prezelj: Thank you for inviting me and of course Balkan SAYS is a traditional conference for youth, for future leaders from the region and future European leaders who are interested in the region of Western Balkans. Balkan SAYS stands for Security Architecture Youth Seminar. Our focus is to discuss security issues, problems in the region and we always try to bring, discuss these things in the framework of future cooperative security frameworks, future peace, future mutual prosperity and this is the aim of the event. It’s very important that the event is organized by the youth section of the Euro-Atlantic Council of Slovenia They are very keen on organizing that they are able through this mechanism to grow.

You know, if you organize as a student an international conference, participated by people from different continents, and now sponsored by important institutions, that means something in the life of young people. And of course, on the other hand, we have the participants, we have very, we have done, we always have to do very serious selection, because we are covering basically all the costs and this year we had 106 applications and we selected around 40 people. So these selected people are the smartest, the brightest, people who already have done some things, or they are writing or they have a young career, a prospective career enthusiasts or something like that. And because of high selection, we place here always very interesting speakers. We have coming people like former presidents, national security advisors, high officials from Slovenia or from abroad or from international conference organizations. And these students always give them a hard time, which is actually fantastic.

We are joined by common interests. So we have great speakers and we have great students. And the meaning of this is like, as I didn’t mention, this is the 13th consecutive conference. And with this conference, we’re trying to make an impact in the region. This impact is, of course, not high. We are not talking about, you know, a strategic conference organized by the government. Of course, we are not so highly profiled, but our impact in the region is, you know, through future leaders, through smartest people who are getting in their process of growing the details, the details that they need to become smarter, more responsible, and of course, at the end, more influential people for the sake of peace of the region.

The Geopost: Some topics included the Russian influence in the Balkans from the Slovenian perspective and your organization. How do you view this influence?

Prezelj: You know, Balkan has always been, you know, more influenced from outside than from inside, It seems to me, but let me elaborate. So, if you don’t have power, theoretically speaking, if you don’t have some kind of power which prevents foreign influence, for example, Yugoslavia was some kind of power creating a kind of stability and preventing this influence to some extent. If you have many smaller states, some of them weaker than others, and the history of conflicts, this is a very, as we know, useful playground for anyone from abroad to test, to exert influence. to use and even misuse the region. And we have seen in the past, you know, the region has been influenced from all sides you know, from east, from north, from south, and from the west. But talking about Russia, you know, it’s of course quite clear, the situation is quite clear. Serbia is in a way divided or it’s kind of, it’s in a way stuck on their way to the European Union.

Militarily speaking, tries to be neutral. On the other hand, tries to foster best relations with Russia and China. And of course, for Russia, Serbia is a great entry point, not only for neutralizing public opinion in Serbia, but also in the wider region. Russia is doing that through their media outlets, which are legal in Serbia, and through these outlets Russian influence is also in public opinion in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which on the other hand is also a very divided country, also in terms of their potential to join NATO, internal cohesion, political rivalries and things like that. And, of course, the influence of the situation in Kosovo between Serbs and Albanians. So the influence is here. It’s a very systematic one. It has impact.

The message is, in a way, I mean, there are many headlines or main goals of this disinformation campaign, but the most important are actually the same as in the North and Central Europe, and this is that EU is a weak actor, NATO is a bad actor, There is fascism rising from the West and, you know, this kind of approach has been used not only now but also in the times of Cold War. So, that’s it. This influence also, you know, divides, continues to divide the region politically, internally, and I guess it’s quite difficult for local population, you know, sometimes to believe or to know what actually is the truth. Maybe regarding the Ukrainian war or something like that. Because with all disinformation coming from all sides, it’s kind of, you know, we all have these problems in modern world. We call this world post-truth reality world, where our first problem is just to figure out what is the truth. And Western Balkans is not an exception here. But yeah, from the Russian side, we have seen quite extensive operations and efforts.

The Geopost: Slovenia is part of the EU and NATO, and we are very close. What can Slovenia do to help the Western Balkans with disinformation and EU integration?

Prezelj: Yeah, well, the second part of the question is easier. Slovenia has always been as a former Republic of Yugoslavia has always been very much interested and very much sensitive for the security and economic situation in the region. Slovenia has been supporting all cooperating processes in the region, has been a great supporter of Montenegro, a great supporter of North Macedonia.

Also has had a great dialogue always with Bosnia and Serbia, not to mention both connection and close contacts with Croatia. As a non-permanent member of the Security Council, Slovenia has always acted as a country which gives early warning, as a country which brings recommendations what to do, as a country which leads some initiatives or helps with initiatives. And this also includes, you know, our worry and concern for the state of democracy in the country, for the media freedom in the countries, and also for the, you know, disinformation. Disinformation is a kind of spoiler in the information space because its purpose is to confuse people obviously and that is not beneficial for the region. So Slovenia at the general level has always been helping. More specifically, the state or the level of disinformation is is difficult to grasp also from the Slovenian perspective internally. So we have some different ministries and the Government Information Office, we’ve got some groups which are trying to tackle with disinformation coming into Slovenia.

And then we would somehow expect that also other countries in the region would start developing the same bodies. For dealing with that, we also need to apply more software, maybe also AI-supported solutions to identify disinformation and also apply in the region, not only in Slovenia. But it’s very difficult because the way how disinformation spreads is not mathematically symmetric or it’s it’s not so clear there are so many potential actors which just you know like we just take information add some information so at the end you know even the person who was who was injecting disinformation at the end of the chain, you and the person who could inject this doesn’t know exactly what happens to that disinformation or information. So it’s a very difficult for Slovenia and also for European Union. In European Union, we have some kind of EU has The East StratCom Task Force which is publishing disinformation review.

Which can be ordered also in the Western Balkans, and maybe we can communicate that well enough, but there exists a disinformation review published by the EU, which actually is pretty much case-based, so they identify the cases of disinformation, they extract the narrative, so that responsible journalists or editors or academics or whoever, you know, you and me could look at this and say, all right, so this is what’s now happening and this information really is not real. This is, you know, an invention by someone for malicious purposes. So, that’s how, so let’s say, so Slovenia through its influence in the media freedom dimension, the dimension of state of democracy, will always, and is also paying attention to what’s happening in the region. As you know, the context is not good, the risks are high, so here I think we will also have to do much more to help the region, but of course also the region will have to do much more to help itself.

/The Geopost.