Days of Putin's propaganda in Belgrade

Belgrade is famous as a cosmopolitan city, open to all cultures, traditions and ideological orientations. This is supported by two events that took place in the capital of Serbia during December.

"Days of Darje Dugina" were held on December 6 and 7, and a few days later, on December 11 and 12, "Belgorod Days in Belgrade" were held. The first event was a true celebration of various neo-fascists who look to the Kremlin as a guiding star. It was attended by Martin Kovač (Czech Republic), Stevan Gajić (Serbia), Rainaldo Gracijani (Italy), Ines Pedreti (Italy), Iv Bataj (France), and Aleksandar Dugin himself, the main ideologue of the Russian versions of totalitarianism and the father of the late Darja, to whom the festival is dedicated. The European guests are actually extreme right-wingers who operate under the umbrella of the Kremlin.

 

Days of Darje Dugina

Rainaldo Graziani is the son of Clemente Graziani, co-founder of Ordina Nuovo, probably the most important extra-parliamentary neo-fascist organization in post-war Italy, disbanded in 1973 after its members participated. in some of the deadliest terrorist attacks of the era. Rainaldo continued his father's legacy in 2017 by founding the Reuropa Association, together with his wife Ines Pedreti, who also participated in the Belgrade event.

Historian Iv Bataj is a French nationalist, a great admirer of Radovan Karadžić, a man who appeared as a witness at the Hague Tribunal, where he calmly denied the genocide in Srebrenica. In the courtroom, he said that Šešelj and Karadžić were "Serbian heroes", and that the key proof that there was no genocide was that Karadžić, during the meeting on July 17, 1995 in Pale, did not tell him about any mass liquidations in Srebrenica.

Stevan Gajić is a professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, a typical Kremlin propagandist, a person who calmly asserts that "Ukrainians and Russians are not brothers, but Ukrainians are Russians, that is - Little Russians", as they were "imposed after decades of national engineering" false identity”. And now Vladimir Putin and his butchering hordes have decided to kill them all to prove to them that they are Russians.

 

War-mongering propaganda of the evil empire

At the rally, you could hear the powerful slogans of Kremlin propaganda, which we have heard a thousand times since the flesh and blood of Putin's megaphones occupied the Serbian public space. Aleksandar Dugin said that today's Europe is "anti-Europe, it has broken ties with its heritage, roots, Christian spirit, philosophy and turned into a graveyard of historical ideas". Nevertheless, "Daria strongly believed that European nations would wake up and return to their identity".

The return to identity is probably what Russia is currently doing in Ukraine - mass slaughter of civilians, destruction of infrastructure, razing to the ground of cultural and sacred buildings, including Orthodox churches. If the European Union nicely attacked a country, without any reason, and started a genocide - that would be a return to the traditional European identity. And it would not be worse to ban freedom of speech, abolish the dignity of man and all his rights, and expose to repression anyone who dares to think for himself, as is the case today in Putin's Russia.

Stevan Gajić repeated the nonsense about Russia as a Catechon, whose mission is to prevent the triumph of evil in history and delay the arrival of the antichrist, and preached that Darja Dugina "lived for good and for freedom", how she "fearlessly entered war zones, where she witnessed how Russia bloodily defends the majority of the world against a completely verified hegemony". Who would say that aggression against a neighboring country is a fight "for good and for freedom", and that the making of mass graves is "the defense of the world's majority against completely verified hegemony"?

Nothing, Kremlin propagandists perfected Orwell - good is evil, lie is truth, black is white. Everything is upside down in their twisted, twisted world. And all this takes place in the Belgrade Media Center, as if it were the most normal conference, and not the war-mongering propaganda of the evil empire, which would prefer to turn the whole world into its private garden of death, suffering and slavery.

Days of Belgorod in Belgrade

Similar Kremlin fairy tales could be heard at the "Belgorod Days in Belgrade" in the Russian House. "The majority of Serbs see the war in Ukraine as their own war, and we see that Russia is not only waging that war for the Serbs, but also for the entire free world," said Miloš Ković at the round table "Belgorod border: historical and (geo)political challenges and perspectives" . This is the history professor who got the support of the fan hooligans to stay at the university, even though the authorities claimed that he did not meet the conditions for that. He is best known for persuading young people to die for their homeland, which Ković himself did several times in his life, of which he died at least six times in Kosovo, so he invites young people to follow his shining example.

 

As part of the event, the photo exhibition "Yesterday Belgrade" was held. Today, Belgorod. Blood trail NATO", with a clear message. Milošević's regime was innocent, it couldn't be more innocent, so NATO bombed Serbia without any reason, and the same is happening today in Russia, even though NATO is not participating in the war. However, the fact that some military forces are not at war against Russia does not prevent Russian propagandists from claiming that they are waging a battle against Western civilization. Of course, in self-defense. The raids on the Russians began with the raids on the Serbs, that's the main message of this manifestation.

 

All Kremlin manifestations in Serbia have the same goal - how to justify the unacceptable and normalize the abnormal in a thousand ways, that is, how to present the aggressive, criminal policy of Putin's Russia as a defense of traditional values, virtue and goodness. To portray the bloody campaign against Ukraine and mass crimes as bravery and heroism, with a little help of manipulations, falsifications, lies, mocking of facts, distortion of logic and similar dishonorable means. If the consequences of the villainous Kremlin policy were not tragic, all the transparent and rather dull stories of Putin's megaphones would be simply comical, because even a starving dog with butter wouldn't eat it.

 

Big Serbs and little Russians

However, in the programs of Kremlin propagandists there are also purely comical tones. Such, for example, was the presentation of the bilingual Russian-Serbian book Serbs in Belgorje in Russia: inextricable historical and cultural ties. There were several comedic elements, and two stand out in particular. At the promotion, there was talk about Serbian-Russian cultural ties, and about the powerful Serbs who moved to Russia during the great migrations.

It's just that no one notices the humorous fact that the Serbs who immigrated to fraternal Russia quickly stopped being Serbs, were assimilated and became Russians. Unlike the Serbs who went to Austria-Hungary, they established their communities, churches, schools and various civic and cultural institutions there. None of the strong defenders of Serbian national identity see anything strange in this, let alone funny. I guess because the supreme ideal of big Serbs is to become little Russians.

The other comic element was taken care of by one of the presenters of the book, Dr. Nebojša Kuzmanović, director of the Archives of Vojvodina. He spoke about the life story of Nikolaj Stankjevic, whose ancestors immigrated to Russia from Serbia.

"I was educated at the Faculty of Philosophy, but I only got to know the work of Stankjevic, of Serbian origin, through this book," says Kuzmanović. Apparently, he had no one to direct him to the relevant literature.

 

A 'peaceful port' for Putin's propagandists

Namely, the study Russian Thinkers by Isaija Berlin was published back in 1948, and the Serbian translation of this book was published 11 years ago in the Official Gazette. In that book, Berlin gave a brief account of Stankiewicz's doctrine, wrote about how he "preached a secular, metaphysical religion with which he replaced the teachings of the Orthodox Church", treated Stankiewicz's uncritical acceptance of Hegel's philosophy somewhat ironically, and explained how he influenced numerous writers and thinkers of his time, including Turgenev and Bakunin, who was his most faithful student.

Kuzmanović only discovered yesterday that Stankjević existed at all, but it doesn't bother him at all to speak at the promotion, as a connoisseur, an expert and a connoisseur of the subject. Those so-called Russophiles are strange, they know little about Russian culture, what for the rest of the world that does not look at the Kremlin as the New Jerusalem is a well-known common place, for them it has the charm of novelty and discovery.

Comedic tones, however, cannot hide the essence of such events directed by the Kremlin, which are becoming more and more frequent in the capital of Serbia. Belgrade has become a safe harbor for Putin's propagandists of all colors, for those who relativize crimes, for those who justify the massacre and falsify not the past, as is the custom, but the present, crimes that take place in real time, of which we are contemporaries.

 

Belgrade practically became the main European center for the international propaganda of Putin's neo-fascism, evil and madness. "This city used to throw lights far away", but today the blackest darkness shines from it.