Kosovo Targeted By Russian Disinformation

Bosn­ian media is report­ing that Koso­vo has been tar­get­ed by Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion, which seeks to under­mine Kosovo’s state­hood and West­ern engage­ment in Koso­vo and the region. Accord­ing to a Balkan Insight arti­cle:

Sep­tem­ber 6, 2021 A report pub­lished on Tues­day by the Koso­var Insti­tute for Pol­i­cy Research and Devel­op­ment, KIPRED, about the poten­tial for Russ­ian media dis­in­for­ma­tion to under­mine Kosovo’s state­hood urges the author­i­ties to address UN mem­ber states with an appro­pri­ate strat­e­gy to counter it. […] The report, enti­tled ‘Koso­vo Obser­va­to­ry: Russ­ian Diplo­mat­ic War and Media Dis­in­for­ma­tion’, analysed state­ments, press con­fer­ences, arti­cles and oth­er doc­u­ments from Rus­sia that were pub­lished from June 1 to August 15 this year.  Peci said the report cal­cu­lat­ed that “out of 500 news arti­cles that direct­ly or indi­rect­ly relat­ed to Koso­vo, 96 or 19.2 per cent of them con­tained mis­in­for­ma­tion”.  Accord­ing to the report, the largest num­ber of arti­cles con­tain­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion were pub­lished by Sput­nik Ser­bia (71 items), fol­lowed by TASS (nine), Rus­sia Today (four), UNZ (four), Sput­nik Inter­na­tion­al (three), Russ­ian Insid­er (two), The Duran (two) and News­front (one).  The report con­cludes that Rus­sia is try­ing to under­mine Kosovo’s state­hood and West­ern engage­ment in Koso­vo and the region, and to change the nar­ra­tives about war crimes in the for­mer Yugoslavia, thus under­min­ing the foun­da­tions of inter­na­tion­al justice.

Read the rest here.

Recent GIOR report­ing on Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions and dis­in­for­ma­tion in East­ern Europe has included:

• In Sep­tem­ber, we report­ed that Rus­sia is cul­ti­vat­ing and sup­port­ing far-right groups in Bosnia and Ser­bia that oper­ate under the guise of human­i­tar­i­an aid.

• In August, we report­ed that Russ­ian media out­lets are ampli­fy­ing the Baltic dis­in­for­ma­tion out­let “The Baltic Word,” linked to a cyber espi­onage campaign.

• In April, we rec­om­mend­ed a NATO study assess­ing Lithuania’s mea­sures to counter Russ­ian disinformation.