Аpril 2022
As part of the program Regional Initiative to Combat Disinformation, we present you a new analyses of fake news and disinformation narratives.
America has completely revealed its cards: Serbia by the standards of the West – broken and on its knees
Sputnik Serbia, the branch of the Russian Sputnik in Serbia, media under the direct control of the Russian government, published the news after the visit of US State Department official Karen Donfried that the United States of America wants Serbia “crushed and on its knees”.
“When the USA asks Serbia to give up Kosovo and Russia, it actually wants Serbia on its knees. Only like that, disarmed and without integrity, it would be good enough for the standards of the West”, is the beginning of the Sputnik Serbia text.
In the text, Karen Donfried’s visit is interpreted in the words of the retired American diplomat and former US ambassador to Serbia, William Montgomery, who said that the Western Balkans are a priority for the White House and that is why “a strong, experienced team has been entrusted with the task of achieving goals related to Kosovo, that Serbia recognizes its independence within the current borders and that Moscow does not veto Kosovo’s admission to the UN”.
In the text, Serbia and the Serbs in the region are presented as victims of the selfish interests of the West, NATO and America. It is further stated that Serbia’s alignment with the EU’s foreign policy and imposing sanctions on Russia would be equal to “voluntary suicide”.
“The demands that were presented to Serbia are unacceptable by all means, but that is what NATO is least interested in. For them, Serbia is a hole in the strategic depth, and not only the country of Serbia, but also the Serbs as a political factor in Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, or Macedonia. The Serbs as a factor stand out from the picture of a united Europe and the united front that is being created towards Russia,” writes Sputnik Serbia.
Further, it is stated that the ideal Serbia for the West is one that does not exist, “or if it does exist, that its sense becomes changed beyond recognition”.
The visit of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried was used to manipulatively portray the West’s plans to destroy Serbia, although the messages she sent to Serbia were completely different. Without citing sources or any statements by American officials, it is said that just as Serbia was once a problem for Hitler, today it is under pressure to “join the NATO alliance in the attack on the East.”
After the meeting with the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić and the Prime Minister in the technical mandate Ana Brnabić, it was announced in only half a sentence that there was a discussion about the attitude of Serbia towards the situation in Ukraine. When it comes to Kosovo, Donfried repeated the long-known position of the United States of America that Kosovo and Serbia must “come together and urgently re-engage in dialogue with the support of the European Union.”
“Partnership with Serbia is very important to us. The arrival of Karen Donfried is another confirmation of the desire to build stronger ties between Serbia and the USA”, announced the US Embassy in Belgrade.
That Serbia resists all pressures is further argued in the text with the manipulative fact that Chinese military planes carrying the FK-3 air defense system landed in Belgrade “not coincidentally on Easter”, “thereby Serbia’s defense capability was strengthened”.
What is not mentioned in the text is that the delivery of the Chinese missile system to Serbia, which stirred up political circles in the region and Europe, considering that Serbia is a candidate country for EU membership, was agreed much earlier. The system was agreed upon and ordered in 2019, with additional contract annexes in 2020. In addition, the fact that this missile system arrived in Serbia with the permission of two NATO member states, Bulgaria and Turkey, through which it was transported to Belgrade, was avoided.
This news published in the last week of April on the Sputnik Serbia portal is one of a series of similar ones that have been appearing for years in pro-Russian tabloids close to the government. This analysis and similar analyzes of geopolitical and international situations, completely baseless in reality, influence the formation of the attitudes of Serbian citizens towards the EU on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other. That news do not stay only on the portal of the mentioned media, because Sputnik’s free reports most often end up in the most widely read Serbian media. For several years now, researchers have noticed that Russia is being talked about positively in the media, while negative reports refer exclusively to the United States of America and the European Union.