By Thomas Brey

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Sarajevo, Belgrade, Skopje and Podgorica are less than a two-hour flight away from Germany. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, North Macedonia and Montenegro are actually considered the “backyard” of the EU and NATO. Without exception, all of their neighbors are EU and NATO members. Billions of euros were invested here by the USA and the EU. An army of Western diplomats and experts has been trying for decades to anchor these countries in Atlantic structures. The aim is to block Russia's influence in this region. However, the financiers of these countries have now lost out.

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While Albania and Kosovo are clearly sailing Western coast, the other four countries are increasingly turning towards Russia. The paradoxical situation is that in all opinion polls, citizens describe Russia and China as their countries' greatest friends and benefactors. Yet two thirds of all foreign investment, 60 per cent of foreign trade and practically all non-repayable aid in the millions comes from the West. The particularly low-interest loans anyway. Nobody would think of studying in Russia or China, let alone working there. Emigrants are drawn en masse to Switzerland, Great Britain and, above all, Austria and Germany. And yet Moscow and Beijing are considered the closest allies.

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Propaganda creates a virtual world

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How can this virtual world view be explained? This is where the Kremlin's most powerful tool of influence — propaganda — comes into play. The state media “Sputnik Serbia” has been working with a large editorial team in Belgrade for ten years. RT (formerly Russia Today) followed in November 2022. Since last December, this Kremlin agency has also been running a TV channel. As a reminder, the EU had already banned these Kremlin branches from continuing to disseminate their programs in March 2022. In contrast, all three Russian state media provide EU candidate Serbia and its neighbouring countries with extensive material in Serbian language free of charge, which presents the Russian view of the world with all its propaganda, lies and distortions. Almost all major media in Serbia, Bosnia, North Macedonia and Montenegro adopt this “information” one-to-one on a daily basis. There are also hundreds and hundreds of portals. Every day, a flood of Russian information pours down on people in the region, who end up believing even ludicrous “facts” that contradict all logic.

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The content of this indoctrination is always the same: Russia is lifted into the sky, the West is downright demonized. Russia's economy is prospering, the West's is on the brink of collapse. In Europe and the USA, broad sections of the population are impoverished, and societies are deeply divided into a small elite and the broad mass of the oppressed. Despite social hardship, the elite is loosening billions of euros for Ukraine, which could never win the war even with Western weapons. The money would be better spent to support those in need at home. Western societies are threatened by the dissolution of the patriarchal-Christian family model by the LGBTQI movement. The USA, which today exploited the EU in a colonial way, would be replaced as the leading Western power by a multi-polar world led by Russia and China.

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Superstar and role model Putin

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In these countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin is regarded as the ideal type of politician in the sense of a “father of the nation.” The political system in the EU states is doomed. The better alternative was the forms of government in Russia and China. It is therefore right that the nations should each rally around a strong leader to ward off the alleged national threats from other peoples. These blueprints were adopted by Serbia, by far the largest and most important country in the Western Balkans: An autocratic ruling President Aleksandar Vučić has disempowered parliament, state and local governments, the judiciary and the media and focused on his person.Rampant corruption has made a small group in Vučić's orbit fabulously rich in some cases.

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Germany in particular, by far the most important partner of Serbia and its neighbouring countries, is a target for Russian-Serbian demagogy. “German politics have been anti-Serbian throughout history,” the leading politicians claim repeatedly. German political foundations carried out the overthrow of Vučić. Berlin was already responsible for the breakup of the multi-ethnic state of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. According to this reading, anti-Serb ambitions are fed by “revenge for defeat in the First and Second World Wars.” The Germans are still undercover Nazis today. “They want to teach us democracy and are themselves Hitler's heirs,” the censored government papers on the front pages say indignantly.

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Orban as a hub of the autocrat network

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It is not just Serbia and the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro who are firmly in the grip of Russian propaganda. In the meantime, a network of autocrats has emerged that openly represents Russian positions in order to consolidate their own power. The center of this network is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. He has eliminated large parts of opposition in politics, culture and media within. In foreign policy, Orban represents the most important Kremlin narratives, insults the “EU bureaucracy” as hostile and sees Hungary as a Christian fortress against migrants and libertarian Western forms of society. Orban's model of an “illiberal democracy” deliberately borrows from Putin's “controlled democracy.” Budapest is cooperating economically with Russia in the supply of oil and gas as well as in expanding its nuclear power plant.

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The Slovakian head of government Robert Fico, who has quickly enforced the Hungarian blueprint at home, is proving to be an obedient pupil. Austria is currently negotiating whether the chairman of the right-wing populist FPÖ, Herbert Kickl, can become Federal Chancellor. The FPÖ wants to “stop EU madness” and was bound by a “friendship agreement” between 2016 and 2024 between the Putin party “United Russia.” The next domino in the network of Putin admirers could be the Czech Republic, where, according to all forecasts, the pro-Russian former head of government Andrej Babiš is likely to clearly win the parliamentary elections in autumn. It was not without reason that Orban, Kickl and Babiš were the founding fathers of the “Patriots for Europe”, today the third-strongest group in the European Parliament.

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This is by no means the end of the series of countries whose orientation towards Russia was (co-) organized through Kremlin propaganda. In Romania, the presidential election was annulled after the Russophile Calin Georgescu won the vote completely unexpectedly through a campaign on social media supported massively by Russia. Even though a narrow majority in Moldova has opted for their country's western course, politics and society are deeply divided under the continuous fire of Russian propaganda. Following massive influence from the Kremlin, Georgia has for the time being said goodbye to its EU course. There are 2027 presidential elections in France, which are likely to be won by Russia-savvy Marine Le Pen. Not to mention the outcome of the federal election with the pro-Russian parties AfD and BSW. In his farewell speech, US President Joe Biden dramatically warned of the toxic influence of disinformation and fake news. Unbridled media power in the hands of a few oligarchs could dramatically endanger democracy. It is precisely this strategy that Russia's Putin has been using in Europe for a long time.

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Counteract Russian propaganda

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What could the EU do to curb the toxic Russian propaganda that has won people's hearts to this day? Reform and unbundling of media landscapes are at the forefront in order to remove them from the grip of political elites. Today, in almost all cases, the media act as a propaganda megaphone for governments. As a counterweight to fake news in favour of top politics, foreign radio programs such as Deutsche Welle or Radio Free Europe must be expanded. In particular, the media literacy of young people who are already being indoctrinated at school should be strengthened. They must learn to distinguish clumsy propaganda from “real” news. Coaching young journalists is also an order of the day. Finally, everyday propaganda must be identified and corrected using journalistic standards. Because if the West lets things go as they have done, there is no chance of convincing the citizens of the Western Balkans of democracy, reform, a market economy and pluralistic ways of life. Billions of euros and an army of diplomats and experts are of no use here. There is still a time window for this.

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The author worked for over three decades as the South East Europe correspondent for the German Press Agency. After his retirement, he became a university lecturer and coach for young journalists from South-East Europe, for whom he has written two textbooks. You can read the entire study on Russian propaganda on the website of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation: https://shop.freiheit.org/#!/Publication/1854

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