When thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets in cities across the country on June 22 and 23, in the first mass anti-government protests in the country since the start of the full-scale Russian military invasion – when citizens called on President Volodymyr Zelensky to veto a law passed in parliament that questioned the anti-corruption reforms – pro-Russian propagandists saw a huge opportunity to reinforce their propaganda narratives and manipulations.
The false claim of far-right US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, that the anger of the protestors was aimed at President Zelensky for lack of a peace agreement with Russia, came as “ace of spades”.
The Ukrainians have proved their democratic capacities, taking to the streets in the midst of a war and constant Russian shelling of civilian targets, for higher goals significant for the future of the state, aware of the high risk of them being misused by Russian propagandists and their apologists outside Russia.
Even worse, public protests and growing tensions between civil society and the government create an ideal environment for Russian influence to destabilize the situation in Ukraine. We are facing serious risks at the moment. What could happen could be truly catastrophic – not only for Ukraine, but also for entire Europe, will write Olha Daniliuk, a prominent Ukrainian journalist, Editor-in-Chief of “Volynska Gazeta” and co-leader of the “ViLNi” media project, for CIVIL Media.
Unfortunately, the fears of the Ukrainians, but also the constant warnings of CIVIL as an organization that has been fighting disinformation and malicious propaganda for years, have come true. Russian propagandists used this opportunity as well to place their false narratives, for which they receive wholehearted support from their installations throughout the Balkans, as part of the Serbian-Russian world, in which North Macedonia has also been drawn in through certain media outlets, but also government representatives.
Serbian-Russian propaganda narratives in the media in North Macedonia
The false claims of far-right US Congresswoman, as usual, have found fertile ground in media that are part of the Serbian-Russian world, along with their affiliates in North Macedonia.
Traditionally, Serbian pro-Russian media, such as Sputnik in the text „US Congresswoman says: Zelensky doesn’t want peace, throw him out of office” and Politika – “US Congresswoman: Zelensky is a dictator, the US must stop funding him” have accepted Greene’s false claims, supplementing them with the typical Russian narratives about Zelensky as the head of the “Kyiv regime”.
Evidence for the allegations from the Report of the European Parliament on Macedonia’s progress towards the EU, in that the “Serbian world” is undermining the sovereignty of North Macedonia and the region, and that government representatives in Skopje are supporting and promoting it, was sought by Vecer press, which in the text titled: “US Congresswoman: Zelensky is a dictator, the US must stop funding him”, uncritically – “from A to Z”, only with a Macedonian translation from Serbian, conveyed the Russian propaganda narratives in Serbian media, without bothering to seek confirmation of the truthfulness of Congresswoman Greene’s claims about the protests in Ukraine.
Russian propaganda is deeply embedded in these regions, and is widely spread in the so-called “Serbian world”, where, as the European Commission also warned in its report, North Macedonia is under the negative influence of the “Serbian world”.
Russian propaganda almost entirely reaches us through Serbia, particularly Serbian media, in which pro-government media dominate. Then, some Macedonian portals download news from their Serbian counterparts, according to the “copy – paste” principle, uncritically, without verification, even though they contain disinformation, manipulation and misleading narratives like those used by Russian propagandists to harm Ukraine and the West, even though the country, unlike Serbia, is a member of NATO, and as such has an obligation to recognize and respond to malicious Russian propaganda.
CIVIL’s Monitoring Team, which continuously monitors activities of foreign malicious propaganda in the country, has multiple times noted the enormous presence of Russian-Serbian propaganda in a large part of Macedonian media outlets. Based on the overall analysis of the impact of this propaganda, namely, its most prominent “actors”, it concludes that Putin and Vucic are the “icons” of the anti-Western campaign in some Macedonian media outlets, Peskov and Lavrov are the propaganda stars in the information space of pro-Russian Macedonian media outlets, and one gets the impression that the spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Zakharova, is the informal head of several Macedonian portals for spreading Russian propaganda.
Even though Putin is still the undisputed “ruler” of the Macedonian internet space, at least when it comes to media outlets where the country’s Euro-Atlantic commitment is not at the forefront (mildly put), nevertheless, the Serbian President occupies a large part of the pie that pleases the Eurosceptic, anti-NATO and remaining retrograde part of Macedonian society.
In the role of servants of Russian propagandists, these media outlets uncritically convey the statements of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the open threats of its spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, with nuclear weapons against Britain, and with a devastating retaliatory strike against Western allies if they oppose Russian demands, while forgetting that North Macedonia is a member of the Western Alliance, and among those states that support and help Ukraine in its just fight for liberation from the Russian occupier, and that the same Foreign Ministry, the minister and spokesperson declared North Macedonia an enemy state, a legitimate target of possible Russian retaliation.
This pro-Russian media grouping, consisting of several permanent, already well-known members, by spreading such Serbian-Russian propaganda, has the goal to undermine citizens’ support for NATO, the EU, and overall for Western democratic values, regardless of whether it’s about elections, or trivial matters like Eurovision, when after last year’s event some of the Macedonian media outlets joined the outbursts of homophobia from Russian propagandists, some Macedonian media outlets also joined in, who did not fail to convey the statements of their informal “head” for spreading Russian propaganda, Maria Zakharova, who at the time was not taken down from the pages of these media outlets, where they jointly conveyed her homophobic message on Twitter in which she strongly condemned the performances of some participants of this year’s Eurovision and called the music competition held in the Swedish city of Malmö the “funeral” of Western Europe.
Disinformation is part of the basic elements of Russia’s hybrid warfare against the West. Social media and media outlets have become an efficient offensive weapon of the Russian propaganda, through which the Kremlin is carrying out its global plan to destabilize democracies. This tactic, combined with cyber-attacks, economic and political influence, and electoral manipulations, is a key instrument for creating tensions, polarization and chaos in Western societies.
As Xhabir Deralla writes in the analysis “Europe on the Brink: How Russian Hybrid Warfare Could Grow Into a Full-Scale Military Conflict” – Russian propaganda is successfully spreading in Europe through networks of disinformation, fake media outlets and propaganda installations that operate, in some countries in the shadows, but in some quite openly as part of the dominant political, academic and media establishment (Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and others). These networks take full advantage of democratic systems, but in fact work on destroying democracy. By supporting extremist and populist political parties, Russia is creating a climate of polarization and general insecurity in European societies.
When it comes to the Western Balkans and North Macedonia, such tendencies are even more pronounced.
CIVIL’s longstanding monitoring unequivocally shows that the Russian-Serbian propaganda machinery is deeply infiltrated in the media space of North Macedonia, where a large part of Macedonian media outlets, with false narratives and copy-past disinformation and manipulations, is actively working against its own country and its European integration processes. Alarmingly, this is not just a media problem, this is actually a national security issue.
Will we finally resist or will we allow Macedonia to become a pro-Russian propaganda colony, turning some of the domestic media outlets into megaphones of the Kremlin via Belgrade?
Translated by N. Cvetkovska
