“The ghost of Mother Russia in Serbia”: A former Dveri and DSS official had access to a website allegedly controlled by the Russian service

Pro-Russian analyst Dragana Trifkovic, a former member of the Dveri and DSS presidency, had access to the Newsfront Serbia website, the domestic version of a Russian propaganda portal that US authorities claim is controlled by the Russian FSB. An international journalistic investigation, in which Raskrikavanje also participated, revealed a network of at least 70 editors, journalists and contributors from all over Europe who were or still are part of this Russian propaganda machine.

In March 2014, during the days of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, a group of masked men in military uniforms occupied the Crimean Investigative Centre, an independent newsroom that is a member of the Global Investigative Journalists Network (GIJN). They told security guards that everything was arranged with the “Crimean authorities”, and then they stormed in.

“False information is coming from this building,” said one of the masked team leaders. He was one of the few without a phantom, a tall guy dressed in jeans and a black leather coat with a fur collar.

He offered the journalists to stay in their jobs, but under an ideologically different editorial policy: “We will try to negotiate a real deal for real reporting in a real way.” The offer was refused. They managed to grab some of the equipment and documentation and fled their own offices, from which the new media Crimean Front started to operate from that moment.

This event virtually amounted to a media annexation of Crimea, and the job was entrusted to a man in a leather coat – Konstantin Knirik, a pro-Russian political activist from the peninsula. After this, Knirik will be promoted to the position of head of the Crimean branch of Rodin’s Nationalist Party, the party of the then Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, Dmitry Rogozin.

The creation of the Crimean Front was his contribution to the “efforts of Novorossiya” (the Ukrainian territories claimed by the Russians) and “information support”, for which, as he boasted, he was rewarded with medals and orders by the Russian state.

“In the current hybrid war, a camera can do more than a gun”, Knirik, who has been described by Time magazine as “the information warrior of the digital age”, said in an interview.

In the following weeks, the annexation of Crimea was formally completed and Russian separatist actions focused on the Donbas region. The Crimean Front was soon renamed Newsfront, and “information support” to Russian interests continued.

Local editions of the site in different languages began to appear across Europe. Newsfront expanded westwards, launching portals in Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Georgia, France, Germany, Spain and Serbia.

This soon attracted the attention of Western media and institutions.

In 2017, the German weekly Zeit published the testimony of a former Newsfront employee, who revealed that the site is largely funded by Russian intelligence and that some topics are commissioned directly from Putin’s office. Knirik denied this.

In the following period, the US authorities took action against the site. In 2020, the State Department identified Newsfront as one of the pillars of Russian propaganda allegedly linked to the Federal Security Service (FSB). A year later, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions against Newsfront, and then in March 2022, it sanctioned Knirik and three of his colleagues.

Newsfront explicitly named the site as being run by the FSB and stated that Knirik was publishing articles commissioned by Russian intelligence. The site was identified as part of a wider propaganda network secretly run by the Russian state.

“Russia invests heavily in these propaganda houses, which present themselves as news sites to spread false and misleading narratives. They pass their content to each other (…) and the propaganda they produce together is then quoted by larger, more credible media outlets, which pass on the Russian intelligence message to a wider readership,” the US Treasury report says. .

European fact-checkers have also looked into the content of these pages. The European Union’s anti-disinformation portal EUvsDisinfo has so far uncovered hundreds of Newsfront disinformation – from pandemic topics to events in Ukraine. In addition to blatant fake news, the website uncritically passes on the official positions of the Russian military and political top and promotes the ideologues of the Putin regime. The texts are often taken from other Russian sources, many are unsigned and only one name appears in the impresum – Konstantin Knirik.

But he is not alone in this business.

An international team of six European editorial offices, including Raskrikavanje, has uncovered a network of at least 70 journalists, contributors, regional and local editors from all over Europe who are part of this propaganda machine.

Journalists managed to identify them after coming into possession of more than 100 email addresses linked to Newsfront. These are the people who, through these e-mail addresses, were able to publish texts on this propaganda site.

The list we compiled included the e-mail addresses of people who have or had access to the Newsfront site in Serbian. Disclosure journalists identified four of them from Serbia.

All of them are unknown to the general public, except for one woman.

Info Warriors

That year 2016 was not only turbulent for Newsfront because of the arrest of its editor in Kosovo.

It was an important year for the region: parliamentary elections were held in Montenegro, which determined whether the country would vote to join NATO. Knirik openly announced that Newsfront intended to support Russia’s geopolitical efforts here too.

“The current regime is trying to force people into this military alliance. (…) We have a duty to prevent the US from using information to make the Ukrainian scenario in Montenegro a reality”, he said, reaffirming that he sees journalism as a tool for political struggle.

That year, especially on the eve of the elections, Newsfront Serbia ran a fierce campaign against the then Prime Minister, Milo Đukanović, openly advocating in its texts a vote for the opposition, pro-Russian Democratic Front.

At the time, Sazonova also met, as the British investigative website Bellingket reveals, with right-wing Nemanja Ristić, who will soon be accused by the Montenegrin prosecutor of plotting a coup d’état. Ristic is accused of being part of a Montenegrin, Serbian and Russian conspiracy to force pro-Russian forces to power on election day in October 2016, in order to prevent the country’s entry into NATO. Also accused are leaders of the Democratic Front and two agents of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service.

Eventually, Montenegro joined NATO and, after a few years, the accused were sentenced to long prison terms – Ristic to seven years. The verdict was later overturned and a new trial is under way.

Sazonova has since left Newsfront and disappeared from social media. She did not respond to questions from Raskrikavanje.

Knirik wanted her to be replaced by Dragana Trifkovic, as she claims in an interview with Raskrikavanje.

She could not answer why Knirik was chosen as the new editor of the portal.

“There are probably not many people who speak Russian and are involved in journalism.”

But even before this business offer, Trifkovic and Njuzfront had a history of good relations.