“Russian propaganda, fake news, destabilization of democratic societies, are not only a problem in the Balkan region, but also in Europe. In Germany we have Russian propaganda as well, we have the TV station Russia today, and a lot of their news are connected to the right wing populist, corona opponents, the populists supporting Putin, antidemocratic movement, so we also we have lots of real fights with fake news.”, said Dr. Wolfgang Ressmann, Managing Director of OK-TV Ludwigshafen, Germany, and the Chairman of Federal Association of Citizen Media, as well as the Chairman of the Youth4Media-Network, on Conference “Attacks on democracy and human rights: Civil society organizations in support of Western Balkans societies facing disinformation, hate speech and hybrid attacks”
Ressmann, said that in the EU have several problems too.
“We have the right wing populists and nationalists in Hungary, we have them in Poland and Slovenia, too, the Croatia nationalist forces. They all work together to work against the democratic structure of the EU.
I started in 2015 in Ukraine, meanwhile we are working with Moldova, Armenia, Georgia, Belarus, and everywhere the same problems appear, in a very dangerous form, conflicts on one side, in Ukraine the open war, so destabilization of societies is on a very high level. The destabilization is also visible in Georgia, the politics of Russia in Armenia. I think one of the main points is that there is the idea to rebuild the old empires, one of the problems we have.
When we talk about these issues we also have a very positive thing: we have lot of supporters of democracy, supporters of human rights in Europe, in the former soviet Republics and the Balkans. We have to fight for democracy every day. We have supporters. We have to use our forces against the Russian influences. We have to fight for peace too. We have to work together between the EU and the Balkan countries, countries waiting to be members of the EU, and we have to work with civil society. We must build power against this propaganda and kleptocrats and new dictators. I think your conference is one of the way to combine media dialogue in the East with media dialogue in the Balkan in the future.”, said Dr. Wolfgang Ressmann, Wednesday (7.28.2021), Skopje.
