How Moscow and Beijing Enter the News in Bosnia and Herzegovina
From RT and Sputnik to Xinhua and local newsrooms, foreign narratives are increasingly becoming part of the domestic media reality in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
At the end of 2023, at a press conference in Moscow, journalist Darinka Petrović, when asking a question to the Russian president, emphasized that in Bosnia and Herzegovina the Republic of Srpska entity does not have any Russian media. Vladimir Putin replied that “it is a pity that there is no Russian media in those areas”, and that “we should think about” Russia Today (RT) starting to broadcast a program in this area.
Putin’s “we should to think about” soon turned into an announcement from this Russian state television, which produces content that promotes narratives created in the Kremlin, that they shall start a channel in Serbian language for the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although the channel has not (yet) been launched, Bosnian media report that there is, de facto, a correspondence office in Banja Luka, the city where the most important institutions of the Bosnian entity of Republic of Srpska are located.
RT has been banned in Ukraine since 2014, and the European Union, after the start of the all-out Russian invasion in 2022, suspended the broadcasting of several Russian state media outlets, including RT and Sputnik, due to, among other things, “Kremlin’s systematic manipulation of information and the spread of disinformation used as an operational tool to attack Ukraine.”
Russian media siding with Dodik
There are no such bans in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unlike the EU, Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have a unified policy towards Russian state media, and Russian propaganda has been “entering” the media space of Bosnia and Herzegovina for years. RT Balkan launched in 2022 its Serbian-language service from Belgrade. That content is also available in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The analysis of the Transitions magazine showed that RT Balkans broadcasts news about Bosnia and Herzegovina almost daily, very often focused on the activities of the pro-Russian Milorad Dodik, who is a key political actor in the Bosnia and Herzegovina entity of Republic of Srpska, and it does that using a positive tone – from his criticism of the High Representative and the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to his denial of the genocide in Srebrenica, attacks on the US and the EU, including his support for Russia in the war against Ukraine. A similar pattern of favoring Dodik and conveying his party’s narrative, it is said, was followed by another Russian media outlet based in Belgrade – Sputnik Serbia.
German journalist Thomas Brey, a specialist in Southeast Europe, in his analysis argued that the situation in the Balkans is different than in the West, as Russian narratives take root more easily here, given that Serbian political elites in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina traditionally maintain close ties with Moscow and largely control the media landscape. This is compounded by the chronic underfunding of print and broadcast media, which makes free Russian content even more attractive.
This trend remains unchanged and this is shown in the analysis of Russian media coverage during the campaign for early elections for President of the Bosnia and Herzegovina entity of Republic of Srpska, called after the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina ruled that Dodik was banned from political activity for six years. The revelation states that RT Balkan and Sputnik Serbia “put all their cards on the SNSD candidate, repeating the same claims on which Milorad Dodik built his narrative about the elections”.
How the Russian propaganda becomes “domestic news”
Russian narratives do not remain only in Russian media. While Russian media undoubtedly support the ruling elite in the Bosnia and Herzegovina entity of Republic of Srpska, the domestic media, under the strong political influence of Dodik’s SNSD, transmit content from Russian media, presenting it as credible and accurate information, not as propaganda.
RTRS, a public service that should be at the service of all citizens, often acts as a key domestic channel for reproduction and legitimization of narratives coming from Moscow.
In that regard, RTRS often takes news from Russian state media about the war in Ukraine and Moscow’s relations with the EU and the US and broadcasts them in almost original form. This content is particularly dominated by posts about Vladimir Putin and the Russian moves, and there is practically no critical commentary about them.
News such as this one, that Putin says that “we are not threatening anyone, but we should be prepared to reject aggressive actions” are regularly published, and Russian narratives have become an integral part of RTRS’s editorial policy.
For example, a 10-minute video story was recently released about how “the desire of official Brussels to put the European Union at all costs in the focus of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is increasingly destabilizing its economy and weakening the standard of its population day by day.”
The situation is similar with other authorities close to the media – from Alternativa television, via Glas Srpske, all the way to the news agency SRNA.
Cooperation of Chinese and domestic media
Chinese influence in the media looks different. It is not about aggressive political messages, but about the gradual building of the image of China as an ideal economic partner, not only in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but in the entire region.
Beijing has recently been investing significantly in strengthening its main state-owned outlets to look professional and globally competitive, and in 2018 it further centralized them through China Media Group.
As for the Western Balkans and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chinese CGTN and CCTV are included in the offer of the regional cable operators, while the content of the Chinese agency Xinhua is regularly taken by the local media, which is also the result of the cooperation agreements signed with the news agencies of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Patria, FENA, SRNA.
The national public broadcaster BHRT is also happy to cooperate with the Chinese media, so, for example, they were in the program of this TV company a few years ago, broadcast 52 episodes of the series “That Wonderful Beijing”, in collaboration with Beijing TV and the “Bosnian-Chinese Friendship” Association.
This results in mostly positive news about China in most mainstream media in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in both entities. This does not include investigative media that have been writing extensively about dubious Chinese deals in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the past few years.
Weakened media stage
The media stage in Bosnia and Herzegovina has been significantly weakened in the last year. After the withdrawal of USAID, some independent newsrooms faced serious financial problems, resulting in layoffs for journalists, Al Jazeera Balkans and Voice of America were shut down, and the future of Radio Free Europe is uncertain.
That, according to certain estimates, opens up space for the expansion of Russian and Chinese influence – and what does this mean in the context of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region is summarized in an interview with the German journalist Thomas Brey:
“Russian propaganda capitalizes on the unstable political situation throughout the region. The Kremlin’s soft power is concentrated around the editorial offices of Sputnik and RT in Belgrade. From here, Russian narratives are spread in the languages of individual nations. The goal is to prove the alleged superiority of the autocratic Russian and Chinese systems over parliamentary democracy. Russia and China are currently building a new world order in which Europe no longer plays a role. Russia styles itself as a defender of the Christian family against the feminine and libertarian LGBTQ societies of the West. According to this propaganda, only the economic systems of Russia and China have a future, while Western capitalism is on the verge of collapse. Such narratives fall on fertile ground, especially among the less educated and those living in the provinces without foreign contacts.”