The use of Serbian and Yugoslav artworks intended for the big and small screen is one of the more shocking propaganda tricks in the parallel battle for Ukraine. The BBC opened the topic, Serbian media reported, followed by domestic media, writes Truthmeter.mk.
Under the syndicating agreement between Truthmeter.mk and Meta.mk, we republish the text below:
According to our news source, the propaganda in the war in Ukraine really has no end. It is an obvious use of sequences from films and TV series to present the “brave fighters” in various action situations and in two cases the “evil Russian officers” who allegedly enjoy burning Ukrainian villages while drinking beer!
The post in the following photograph (the tweet has since been deleted) had a caption: “Russian occupying soldiers drinking beer after setting the village on fire. “The European civilization is disappearing in flames.” In fact, it is a sequence from the film “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame”, and the key actor is none other than Dragan Bjelogrlic.
This movie is not naive at all. As a reminder – the film was an Oscar candidate (1996) for best non-English language film and is considered to be one of the cult art works of Serbian cinematography. It was filmed in 1996 and tells a real event of the bloody war activities in Bosnia (1992). The film, above all, has an anti-war message, and in this case it has been misused for propaganda purposes.
But that’s not all. A shot from the film “Sky Hook” starring Nikola Kojo, who stands in front of an open window with demolished buildings behind it, was also used for propaganda purposes. The film, however, tells the story of the bombing of Belgrade in 1999, and the piece was also an Oscar candidate (2000) in the best non-English language film category. In the propaganda posts on Twitter, Kojo is presented as a hero from Ukraine, a certain general-sergeant Nikolai Koychenko who “looks out the window at the demolished Kyiv”.
The character of the actor Nenad Okanovic (known to us from the series – “The Village is Burning, While the Grandma is Combing Her Hair”), who is portrayed as a hero of the resistance in Ukraine, was also used for propaganda purposes. A photograph of the Serbian actor was shared on Twitter along with the message:
This is a soldier from Ukraine who destroyed the bridge in Kharkiv and died a hero. His name is Oleksiy Stepanenko Okanovich
The news about the used Serbian actors and art works was actually reported by “BBC” in Serbian after this reputable source came across the tweet of the former Austrian MP Leo Kolbauer, who wrote that the displayed photograph is not a Ukrainian war hero, but the Serbian actor Nenad Okanovic.
Serbian actor Rados Bajic from the series “The Village is Burning, While the Grandma is Combing Her Hair” also found himself in the group of Serbian “war hero replicas”, who was presented as “The spirit of Kyiv” that shot down as many as 16 Russian fighter jets!
