Top Russian-Serbian propaganda of the past week

Last week, Serbia also followed the line of Russian propaganda. This time it was Serbia’s ambassador to the US, Marko Đurić, who told the Serbian medium Tanjug that he did not believe Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, that the Central Bank of Kosovo’s decision on the dinar had been postponed by three months.

While the decision of the Central Bank of Kosovo is aimed at combating financial crime by excluding all currencies other than the euro in this case, the opposite was announced in Serbia. Đurić himself falsely stated on February 12 that due to the CBK’s previous decision, “schools and hospitals in Serbian settlements could not function”.

He misinformed, as the Central Bank of Kosovo postponed the decision for three months and took a number of facilitation measures for the Serb community during the transition period. With the beginning of the implementation of its new regulation, the CBK had stated that it does not prohibit or restrict the acceptance of funds in bank accounts in euros in licensed banks and that it does not restrict the exchange activities of any currency carried out by banks or non-bank financial institutions – banking institutions that are, however, licensed by it.

“Exodus to the West: 54 students left only one school in Ferizaj after visa liberalization” was the title of an article published in RT Balkan on 12.02.2024. With this “clickbait” title, this medium tries to make its news as propagandistic as possible by continuing the narrative of migration and ethnic cleansing, but now also dealing with Albanian municipalities.

The article in question was taken from an article by Democracy and Radio Television of Kosovo (RTK), although the title exaggerates the article, as there is no mass migration as portrayed on this portal.

Last week, the Serbian Orthodox Church distorted facts and pro-Kremlin propaganda on Russian channels. It was Bishop Teodosije who said that allegedly “the Serbian people in Kosovo are threatened with extinction”, a statement that the Russian agency RIA Novosti published in a text entitled “Serbs from Kosovo are threatened with extinction”.

“We who live today in that territory are in a situation where many are leaving us, many friends, many people, when dark clouds hang over us and when people are afraid, when they are threatened from all sides, but the biggest – with which we will disappear from the territory, leave their homes”, claimed Bishop Teodosije.

He was addressing the faithful recently gathered in the Draganac monastery, but such a thing is not true, as the Serbs from Kosovo are not threatened in any way by the CBK’s decision to introduce the euro as the only means of payment, nor by the information from Belgrade that allegedly 14% of Serbs have left Kosovo within a year./G. Venhari-The Geopost/