13.03.2022.

Serbia in the jaws of Russian propaganda

Most of the media act as if they are part of the Kremlin's war machine under the direct command of Vladimir Putin and Roskomnadzor, Russia's federal agency for media surveillance and communications monitoring

While practically the whole world is united in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in support of Ukrainians who are bravely fighting for their country, Serbia is still trying to sit on two chairs, risking kissing the floor. It took the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, two days to make a stuttering statement in which he advocates the territorial integrity of Ukraine, but does not condemn the aggression of Russian troops. After that, Serbia joined the world, voting for the Resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, which strongly condemns the Russian aggression and demands that the Kremlin immediately stop using force against Ukraine. Of course, no imposition of sanctions on Russia is possible, nor any official condemnation of the aggression and crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine.

During that time, most Serbian media acted as if they were part of the Kremlin's war machine under the direct command of dictator Vladimir Putin and Roskomnadzor, Russia's federal agency for media surveillance and communications monitoring. The tabloids celebrate the demolition of Ukrainian cities and give sincere support to the Russian military forces to persevere in the campaign against the neighboring country. The editors and journalists of these disinformation media have fallen into a deep trance, and their satire of civilians and the killing of populated places fills them with enthusiasm, joy and enthusiasm. The tabloids have become a flow boiler for the Kremlin's war propaganda, and the statements of General Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, a man who was paid to spread official lies of the Putin regime to the public, are most normally published there. For example, his statement that Americans and Ukrainians made biological weapons is transmitted as dry truth.

 

Kremlin version of events

 

Perhaps it would be wiser for our tabloids to ask why Konashenkov and his camaraderie do not inform their parents that their sons who went to serve in the army in October died in Ukraine. Or why families can't get the bodies of their dead children. Or why Russian troops are satirizing Ukrainian cities where Russians mostly live. Or why the same conquering troops that protect Orthodoxy shell the churches that belong to their, the Moscow Patriarchate. However, it would be too much to expect Serbian tabloids to show a little empathy towards the Russian people, whom they allegedly love so much. To them, the Serbian victims serve only as a fuel for nationalist madness, they have long ago given up their own profession and humanity.

"Večernje novosti" edited by Milošević's Goebbels Milorad Vučelić hurried to convey immediately after the war what Alexander Dugin, Putin's ideologue who advocates the ideas of Russian supremacy, the supremacy of the Russian people over everyone else, and Russia's conflict with the West have to say. Dugin claims that Putin's Russians are "carriers of a new ideology - not liberal, obviously, but also communist." The ideology is not very new, it was very popular in Germany in the 1930s, but Russian ideologues would not admit it. "We are the people of the Empire," Dugin said on

behalf of tens of millions of Russians, although no one authorized him to do so. For him, this is the beginning of the eagerly awaited clash of civilizations. His text is then transmitted by strong right-wing portals that have been spreading Kremlin propaganda for years.

Vucelic's weekly "Pecat" publishes dozens of articles, exposing a putinoid version of events in which, for example, they quote Colonel-General Vladimir Shamanov, a Russian Duma deputy who sees the creation of territorial defense in Ukraine "as a criminal and sincerely inhumane decision" that only confirms Putin's a statement that the Ukrainian government is a "gang of drug addicts and Nazis." Did the Ukrainians dare to defend themselves from the brotherly Russian army that kills their civilians, children, destroys cities and satirizes the country? Well that's outrageous! It is immediately obvious that they are all criminals, drug addicts and bandits. How dare they?

 

Totalitarianism under quotation marks

 

"Pečat" also broadcasts the text of Natalija Narocnicka, a Russian historian and politician, a member of SANU, a fan of Vladimir Putin, a member of the Board of Directors of the "Russian World" Foundation. She is dead cold and repeats Putin's justification for aggression, adding that Russia wants to prevent the third world war. As Narocnicka writes her text, her beloved leader and his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, is threatening the world with nuclear war. Narocnicka explains the basics of Putin's ideology: "When the Soviet Union collapsed, for me it was the dismemberment of the historic Russian state. Then, for some reason, we were offered to pay for 'totalitarianism', and in return to give 300 years of Russian history. "

Totalitarianism under quotation marks, interesting. So the USSR was not a totalitarian state, and the millions killed in the Gulag did not actually die. There was no terror against one's own people and other peoples, there was no Cheka and KGB that kept the population in fear, there was no massacre of the best, most talented people in Russia such as Osip Mandelstam, Danil Harms, Isak Babel, Pavle Florenski… Kremlin propaganda really knows no bounds, and Putin's offices here treat their readers like idiots. However, the audience voluntarily agrees to that and is still looking forward to it.

Kremlin propaganda in Serbia has been going on unhindered for decades, poisoning its audience with various misinformation and crazy theories. The current government, as well as the former one, opened the door wide to the fans of Putin's dictatorship to enlighten us with their view of the world and the environment, which resulted in the total service of the masses already served by Greater Serbia nationalist propaganda. Prolonged brainwashing with authoritarian means has yielded results, so most citizens here believe that Russia helps Serbia the most, while Europe and all democratic countries in the world are our worst enemies.

 

The Mental Berlin Wall

Even the everyday scenes of terrible destruction that the Russian army is doing in Ukraine fail to change the cemented image in people's heads. All the footage of cruelty, killing civilians trying to leave besieged cities, shelling residential areas, hospitals, schools, kindergartens - means nothing to our putinoid audience, which has long ago built a wall stronger than Berlin in its own head, a mental wall that protects them from all unpleasant facts and realities.

Even the media that are not under Vučić's control are not innocent in this matter. For years, the favorite political analyst of H1 was Djordje Vukadinovic, and today he is participating in the only world gathering in support of Russian aggression and along the way explains how he actually supports the Russian people who are exposed to hate campaigns today. Not to be confused, he does not think of the thousands of anti-war protesters in Russia arrested by Putin's police, nor of all those who suffer repression in Russia for resisting Putin's dictatorship and the destruction of the war.

On the day when the European Union banned Sputnik and Russia Today, Ljubinka Milinčić, the editor-in-chief of Sputnik for Serbia, was a guest in "Impression of the Week", who nicely explained to us what was happening in Ukraine. It is about "forcing peace". Crocodile tears are being shed over the ban on Kremlin propaganda in the Serbian public, and no one remembers the dozens of journalists killed under Putin's regime. Real journalists, people who write the truth, not the Kremlin versions of Dragan J. Vučićević. There is no great outrage over the newly adopted Russian law, which threatens up to 15 years in prison for anyone who publishes news about the war in Ukraine that does not coincide with the official Kremlin lies.

 

Putin's humor

 

Independent media give a wide space to Mladjan Djordjevic, the most ardent admirer of the Russian master, who these days supports the aggression against Ukraine with all his might. On the day the war began, Djordjevic posted probably the craziest message on his Twitter account. He shared Vladimir Putin's speech in which he declared war on Ukraine, followed by a paranoid comment: "I am sleeping tonight in Trebinje, when the phone rings at midnight. A well-known voice apologizes for waking me up, but that he is in trouble, that he doesn't know what to do and that he needs advice. I listened to him and said only briefly: "You have been waiting for a long time, start." The rest is history. "

I guess this is how right-wingers imagine humor, Putin calls him in his deaf age to ask him for advice, our man advises him to carry out aggression, and the dictator immediately takes action. And then people who can think of such disgusting nonsense are a factor in Serbian society. And not since yesterday, Djordjevic was an adviser to Boris Tadic during his presidential term, and Dragan Djilas writes about him: "My best friend, a freedom fighter, democrat and humanist for more than 30 years." For what freedom? For the freedom for Serbia to become a Russian province? It is no wonder that in the news on H1, they calmly quote Sputnik, who says that the Ukrainians shot at their own civilians while the unfortunate people were trying to evacuate from Mariupol. I guess they reckon that a good part of their audience still believes that Bosniaks shelled themselves in Bosnia. Propaganda is a miracle, especially when you repeat it ten thousand times.

 

A fog from which reality cannot be seen

Not to mention the comparison of NATO bombing and Russian aggression against Ukraine, which has become established in all possible media. It never occurs to anyone that the analogy does not work in our favor, because Milosevic's Serbia in the 1990s was what Putin's Russia is today, only in a small way - an aggressor against its neighbors. It would be possible to continue counting to infinity and

back like this, it is almost unbelievable how far beyond the world we are, stuck in our own corner, entangled in long-cherished self-deceptions. The Greater Serbia nationalist propaganda was successfully followed by the Kremlin propaganda, creating a fog in their heads from which reality cannot be seen.

And everything is actually simple. Being on the side of the victim does not require any political knowledge, detailed knowledge of international relations, or anything like that. To be against the aggressor, not to allow him to spread his cynical lies, to side with the invading bleeding country, to side with the million-strong column of refugees - requires only a little elementary human empathy. Unfortunately, this is an emotion that we have been lacking for decades.