Expert: Disinformation Being Spread through Russian Media in Serbia

Vladan Zivulovic (BETAPHOTO/MEDIJA CENTAR BEOGRAD)

Vladan Zivulovic, president of the Atlantic Council of Serbia, said on May 9 that Russian media outlets with offices in the country, like Sputnik, Russia Today and the website of the Moscow Patriarchate, were being used to disseminate a large volume of disinformation for the purpose of "justifying Russia's domestic and foreign policy and creating animosity against the West."

Citing the words of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Zivulovic told reporters at the Belgrade Media Center that 65 percent of foreign investments in Serbia came from the West, and that four million Serbs lived in Western countries. "We're willing to risk all that in our undiscriminating approach to information and acceptance of disinformation like this," he said.

He added that burying information was also present in domestic media outlets, describing this as "fertile ground for manipulation," i.e. favoring information from one side.

Zoran Panovic, program director at the Demostat public opinion research center, stressed that the trend in former Yugoslav states was to filter the war in Ukraine through the narrative of the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, with each country deploying the narrative that benefits it.