Unwanted imports: Anti-EU Kremlin disinformation rides high in N. Macedonia

Most of the anti-EU Kremlin disinformation in N. Macedonia originate abroad, both in Russia and in the West, and then arrive in the country through the social platforms and some through the internet media. Some of them are then adjusted to the local context, and the small number of disinformation pushing Kremlin narratives are native. Because of this, there is a large similarity of Kremlin’s anti-EU disinformation in the country and those all over Europe. Important conduit for the Kremlin disinformation in the country is Serbia, as Kremlin’s Balkans disinfo hub. But, more and more, they tend to also arrive from everywhere. The most important thing is that they are here, and therefore they need to be countered, writes Truthmeter.mk.

Under the content-sharing agreement between Truthmeter.mk and Meta.mk, we republish the text below:

by Vladimir Petreski

How is Kremlin propaganda doing in a small country in the middle of the Balkans, one with fragile democracy and unchecked corruption, one that is having lot of issues with its neighbors, EU candidate country for accession since 2005 and a country that has been living in peace pretty much most of the time since the breakup of former Yugoslavia in 1990, except for 6 months in 2001 when hostilities arose between the Macedonian security forces and the Albanian guerilla of the UCK (People’s Liberation Army), but the number of casualties never surpassed three figures? Pretty well, considering! Much better than some other places in the Balkan neighborhood – like Serbia, for example, which became the regional hub for spreading Kremlin propaganda, or Bosnia, where the interests of the three ethnicities (Serbs, Muslims and the Croats) clash, causing instability used by the Kremlin propaganda, or Montenegro, where Kremlin attempted an unsuccessful coup in 2017 (thankfully) or Bulgaria, where the old communist guard and the nationalist parties are known to be allied with Kremlin on a lot of issues.

But, it is not a smooth sailing all the way in N. Macedonia, too. Kremlin disinformation is still present, using many opportunities to sow fear and divisions, but mostly to capitalize on the fact that N. Macedonia is still far away from the EU membership, guaranteeing full protection from the EU institutions, after becoming NATO member in 2020. But now Kremlin is playing on the country’s economic weaknesses, as well as weak democracy and the populations’ discontent with the lack of progress on the way to EU membership even after the name change and 19 years of candidate status.

Country’s democracy had ups and downs, but still being kept up for the first two decades of independence until the political crisis hit in 2011, when the then authoritarian government led by the right wing nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party closed down the country’s largest TV station, all the way to 2016, when they lost the elections and the first half of 2017 with the scariest day of 27. April 2017, when VMRO-DPMNE supported mob broke into the Parliament building trying to provoke inter-party and inter-ethnic violence, hoping that the ensuing chaos would lead to overturning the elections and allow them to somehow stay in power “to keep the peace and in the name of national security.” It didn’t work. The power changed hands according to the election results, the authoritarian Prime-Minister Nikola Gruevski was convicted by the courts on corruption grounds, but then managed to escape to Hungary, where he still resides under the protection of country’s authoritarian PM, Viktor Orban.

Even back then the long hand of the Kremlin propaganda and their brand of hybrid warfare could be felt in N. Macedonia. Kremlin did its’ best sowing chaos through the local supporters and media, as well as Serbian media exporting Kremlin propaganda south to N. Macedonia. Belgrade tabloids were publishing ridiculous claims of “3 thousand Albanian armed men on the Macedonian-Albanian border” or “4 thousand armed men from UCK at Macedonian- Kosovo border” being ready to attack, engaging local pro-Russian forces in supporting the autocratic government, organizing 34 Russian-Macedonian friendship associations, which is ludicrous and never came to anything, while the Russian oligarch Ivan Savvidis, who lives in Thessaloniki, Greece, was accused of funneling 300 thousand euros to local nationalist and pro-Russian organizations and individuals in N. Macedonia to steer unrest. That’s the guy who stormed the football pitch couple of years before, carrying a gun on his belt, not satisfied with the judges’ decision during one of the games of the Thessaloniki ’s PAOK football team he owned.

All of this, back then, was in order to do everything what Kremlin could, to stop the change of power in the country in order not to allow it to become NATO member. But, when none of this worked, Russia had to satisfy itself by pushing fake news of US military aircraft being chased away by the Russian Air Force over the Black Sea after flying over N. Macedonia airspace for the first time ever as a part of their mission to protect the newest NATO ally’s skies.

AUTHORITARIAN REGIME IS OUT – KREMLIN PROPAGANDA ISN’T

The events around the fall of the authoritarian regime in the country was not the first foray into disinformation and hybrid warfare by Kremlin in N. Macedonia, of course. Their influence could be easily spotted long before, with more serious efforts made around 2014, during the first occupation of the parts of Donbas in Ukraine and the occupation and then annexation of Crimea. Back then the media supporting the authoritarian PM Gruevski, instinctively started turning toward Russia, clearly seeing the signs of West not aligning with autocratic forces, but standing strong on the side of democracy. And so, day after day we started being bombarded with content strengthening Putin’s personality cult (endless republications of the photo of bear chested Putin riding a horse), as well as ton of stories about the might of the Russian army and claims that America has no chances against it. There was even a doctoral thesis about Putin “smarts” and it goes like this: American warships will suffer because of the upcoming global warming. Ocean waves will be so big they will capsize the US ships. Their war- and civilian planes will also become useless. The air will be dirty and full of large particles (global warming again), the aircraft engines will be clogged by them, so the planes won’t be able to fly. But, Putin was smart, this product of deluded doctoral labor goes on. He doesn’t rely on planes and ships, but on trains. And trains don’t care about waves or dirty air. So, Putin’s trains will be able to roam freely all over Eurasia and Africa, while the US will be stuck on its own continent separated by two oceans, making Russia the planet’s superpower.

After the fall of the authoritarian government the things kind of settled (especially after N. Macedonia became a NATO member in 2020). Their propagandists took the back seat, their media’s rhetoric became softer losing the government support they enjoyed, or they turned toward conspiracy theories helped by the Q’anon movement in the USA and the rise of the antivaxx movement during the COVID pandemic. But, it wasn’t about to last.

Then came the 24. February 2022 and the disinformation started flowing in much higher quantities as before. Let me be clear, it never went away, it was never absent. Well known pro-Trump web sites from the town of Veles in central part of the country in 2016 and meddled in that year’s US presidential elections (even Hilary Clinton mentioned them in an interview), were active all the way to the end of 2017 (when another cluster of fake web sites in the town in Kumanovo was also discovered). It is well documented that when it comes to Q’anon and anti-vaxx disinformation, Kremlin’s hand is never far away, as it was quite present during the Great Britain’s Brexit referendum. All of this, though, just continued through a big disinformation upsurge just before the start of the second aggression of Ukraine.

There are couple of differences when it comes to Kremlin disinformation during the rule of the authoritarian Government in N. Macedonia 7-10 years ago and today. N. Macedonia never had a Parliament or a Government where you could see a Government minister or a member of Parliament from the big parties getting on the stage and openly starting to support Russia, Russia’s armed forces or Putin. That was relegated to the party propagandists, the media and the social platforms. Sometimes you could feel the discrepancy of what the authoritarian politicians would speak and what their media and their social media properties would publish or share. The politicians would moderate, but their proxies would fall over themselves to promote Kremlin arguments and attack democratic forces. These days, even the media close to the VMRO-DPMNE are trying to restrain themselves, pretty successfully (with occasional pro-Kremlin excursions), so the Kremlin propaganda’s main outlet became the social platforms (besides the hodge-podge of couple of very small parties, out of which only one is in the Parliament with only two representatives).

Another difference is the fact that the Kremlin propaganda had enough time to invest resources and build networks capable of spreading their disinformation all over the place. When it comes to North Macedonia that means importing vast amount of disinformation from Russia, Serbia, but also from everywhere else. Up until 2016, the main conduit for disinformation were the news portals whose content would then be dumped on the social platforms by the local pro-Kremlin proxies, mainly Facebook where more than half of the country’s population has a profile. But afterwards, Serbian tabloids received a competition when it comes to spreading Kremlin disinformation in N. Macedonia with the rise of the authoritarian right on the European continent or simply by younger crowds liking Trump and being ready and willing to spread the disinformation provided by Q’anon, anti-vaxx movement, climate deniers or Kremlin for that matter. They would see Trump being buddy-buddy with Putin and it didn’t take them long to be persuaded that he and the country he rules – Russia, might not be so bad after all. Trump likes him, right?

And the third and most important difference the way Kremlin’s propaganda operated during the Macedonia’s political crisis and afterwards is the way it acts toward the European Union, its’ member states and the European leaders. While they were not seen as being overtly friendly by Kremlin even before, there were limits to where the Russian disinformation would and wouldn’t go when it comes to attacking the EU in the public discourse. When it comes to the US, Hilary Clinton, Biden, Great Britain (after Brexit) and NATO, they were fair game. But, that was not the case with the EU. Putin had some hopes that the EU wouldn’t go as far as the US, so his propaganda machine didn’t go as far as they would with the US dignitaries. But, those limits became completely porous with the start of the second invasion of Ukraine. All of a sudden, stuff they wouldn’t use in their disinformation campaigns against the EU, its leaders and member states became free for all. The second unprovoked aggression against Ukraine and the West’s strong response, including heavy sanctions on Russia’s economy and the deliveries of many different weapons in the European arsenals to Ukraine shattered any limits concerning disinformation, but also hybrid warfare. And this is felt in North Macedonia. All of a sudden every little crack in the EU and its’ members, any little disagreement, any protest in any European Capital, any historical injustice (real or imagined), any economic issue arising from the cut-off of the Russian gas and oil, every weird habit of a single person in some European country, every dispute between the EU member states or internal issue inside any member state, any new freedom being adopted after a lot of consideration, all of that and much more was a fair game for the Kremlin propagandists to exploit. If you can enlarge and strengthen any disagreement, make it wider, if you can create more hatred between two or more European countries, if you can stoke the fear in European capitals (from a nuclear war, for example, or whatever), if you can enrage some people (the more the better), if you can humiliate European countries, if you can threaten them (by telling a particular country it will become a legitimate target if wider war happens because it is now a NATO member), if you can insult any European or national leader by spreading lies about his family or personal lives, if just a small percentage of citizens loses the trust in their democratically elected Government or even if they become more suspicious of their Government just a little bit, then the Kremlin propagandists would do it. Then it was worth it to them.

FOOD DISINFORMATION – LIES OF CONVENIENCE

And the range of the subjects used for all of this grows all the time. Find an information about somebody from their student days, strip it of its original context and add a different, much more sinister context, and proceed with your character assassination. Kremlin uses everything in their propaganda these days – from the rights of LGBT community, through peoples’ sexual relations, denigrates sex education on the schools, attacks the European political class and its decisions, and even goes after the EU’s food and food habits, as well as the Union’s striving to allow minorities to be able to have the food they are used to. But, since foreign and faraway foodstuffs might not be acceptable for the mainstream EU populations, Kremlin would use that fact to spread disinformation that EU will “force” its’ citizens to eat such food. Then, to enrage the believers or those with mild suspicions, Kremlin will go even further and try to persuade you that the EU wants to destroy your traditional agriculture and force you to produce your food in strange and unusual way you don’t find appealing or even palatable, while also trying to persuade you that the all the food in your supermarkets is genetically modified. All of this stated by and “Ukrainian refugee” behind the camera (whose face we never see) roaming through a Western supermarket, getting more and more enraged and even throwing food from the stalls around, while claiming that it is either tasteless or tastes like plastic. The picture wouldn’t be complete without making individual member states looking bad. Dutch farmers can’t seem to stop protesting and they have been doing that in 2022 and 2023 (wrong, there were no protests in 2023), and the pig farmers in Croatia are slaughtering their pigs because of the “American agenda” (not true – they did that because of disease).

This is the type of disinformation, imported to N. Macedonia about the European food is just an example of one disinformation narrative. As if they want you to find your food gross hoping you might hate your democratically elected Government little bit more because of it and if you manage to persuade couple of friends with your arguments, or, even better, if you share your thoughts on the social platforms, that would be even better.

USE UKRAINE WAR TO ATTACK THE EU

Ukraine, as expected, has the toughest time when it comes to Kremlin disinformation. Over there you can find ton of disinformation meant to spread every anti EU narrative, in order to demoralize country’s public and maybe persuade some of them that EU is not everything as they thought it is. Russian guns, tanks and long range weapons fire all over the 1.200 km long front line and throughout the country’s countryside, town and cities, killing civilians, and those not killed or maimed are suffering through the propaganda meant to kill the spirit of the country’s population and diminish its’ will to resist. And if that doesn’t work, then the propaganda also tries to drive a wedge between Ukraine and the EU, relentlessly spreading disinformation whose narratives imply EU is controlling Ukraine, EU wants Ukraine to lose the war, EU sanctions against Ukraine are not efficient, there is a Rusophobia in the EU, no EU and NATO for Ukraine, decline of the EU and US support for Ukraine, and the one portraying the EU as an aggressor is the most widespread disinformation narrative, finds the latest study ranking the fact-checks of the Ukraine’s prominent anti-disinformation web site StopFake.org. One third of all the StopFake’s fact-checks created after the start of the full scale invasion concern EU directly, and out of those, the fact-checks debunking disinformation pushing the narrative about the EU being the aggressor in this war ranks prominently with 12,4 percent. There are only two other topics being pushed harder by the Kremlin – the one about Ukraine refugees and the one about the military aid. But, since the EU is heavily involved in both of them by providing shelter to the refugees from Ukraine, as well as military aid, these topics are also used to make EU look bad. So, all of this anti-EU propaganda around Ukraine spreads all over the continent and much of it also ends up in North Macedonia, being imported and spread in the Macedonian language.

If you check the February 2023 brief published by the European Democracy Monitoring Observatory (EDMO – EU fact-checkers network), the section on the 10 most viral disinformation fact-checked by the network members in all the 28 EU countries during 2022, the top 5 are on Ukraine and they are by far the most widespread all over EU. The one that is most widespread, has been found in 22 EU countries (about the non-existent US bio-weapon labs in Ukraine), while the next 4 have been found in 20 countries each. All of them have been published od shared in North Macedonia, too. And while the brief deals with the most viral disinformation in 2022, two out of these top 5 most widespread disinformation were also repeated in 2023.

But, when it comes to 2023 and disinformation about Ukraine in North Macedonia, there are claims that the “Western elites” have been preparing this war for a long time, but now “they are getting ready to enjoy the final escalation” of the “brother against brother” war of the “divided (…) Slavic tribes”. But, it seems that is not the only war the West wants. According to this post “the West desperately wants a war between Israel and Gaza, the same way it desperately wanted the war between Russia and Ukraine”. How come? Well, because of a UN Security Council vote on a Russia proposed resolution trying to play a fake peacemaker in the Israel-Gaza conflict, while at the same time nurturing friendly relations with a terrorist organization like Hamas. Conflating different issues and putting them together is a favorite manipulation technique of the Kremlin and this is great example. Voting against a resolution brought forward by an aggressor state doesn’t mean “wanting a war”. The EU is being accused of “planning” the war after somebody just found out that EU countries and Canada were training the Ukraine soldiers after the first limited invasion of 2014. Never mind that the information about this training was public from the day one. It has been used 9 years later as a fake raison d’etre that the EU is behind the Russian aggression of Ukraine.

Then, the “behavior of the European colonialists today is not different from the way they acted in the past”, claims this post and the reason for that is the transfer of the Ukrainian art and other cultural artefacts in the European countries during the war to protect them from the Russian bombs. The post admits that this is done according to the Ukrainian law, but Kremlin doesn’t really recognize the Ukrainian Government.

Turning the context on its head is one of the favorite ways of manipulation of the Kremlin propaganda. And it happens all the time during the war in Ukraine. In this instance, Mihailo Podoljak, the advisor to the Ukraine president Volodymir Zelenskyy is purposely misquoted in order perpetuate the accusation that “the Government of Ukraine is threatening to start terrorist attacks throughout Europe”. Which is not true, of course. The proper context of his statement is that that if Ukraine losses the war, Russian terrorist attacks will start all over the Europe as a precursor to Russian aggression on European countries. Every little opportunity for manipulation has to be used, especially when you know that pro-Russian trolls will spread such lies all over the place and even in a small country like N. Macedonia.

Individual EU member states are also regularly targeted as the guilty ones for the Russian aggression of Ukraine, for perpetuating the war or of having hidden intentions. For example, Poland is accused of wanting “to ask for a part of the Ukraine territory”, despite the fact that nobody from the Polish Government ever said or even hinted something like that. But, the news portal close to the ultra-left Levica party, one of couple of pro-Russian parties in the country and the only one with MP’s in the Macedonian Parliament (2 out of 120 total), doesn’t really care about the truth, as long as there is an opportunity to spread Kremlin talking points to hurt the Polish and the EU’s credibility.

Data source: Visitnomer.mk

Data source: Vistinomer.mk

GERMANY AND FRANCE – PILLARS OF EU, ATTACKED THE HARDEST

Germany is often used as a Kremlin’s playground for propaganda and manipulation. So, the country is being accused of “fighting its third war against Russia within one century”, but funnily enough, couple of months later it is also accused of “raising the white flag” with an add-on that “Kiev starts negotiations with Putin.” This cryptic, but viral post that doesn’t expand at all this explosive claim was shared months ago and anything even close to this hasn’t happened at all. Germany is also accused of forbidding its citizens the use of firewood for heating and then in couple of month later it was also accused of returning to the German Mark and exiting the European Union. Six months on, none of this has happened, of course.

Germany and France are considered as a bedrock of the European unity. So, whenever there are attacks on Germany France cannot be far behind. This post misrepresents 2018 Paris protests regarding pension policy issue, as if it they are the July 2023 protests. Another photo, actually a Netflix show screenshot, is also shared as July 2023 protest photo, the country is falsely accused of “forcing 14 African countries to pay a colonial tax worth 500 billion dollars every year” (there is no such tax, while the 500 billion dollars amount is ludicrous) and then adding that “Putin has, on the other hand, forgiven the debts of couple of African countries worth over 20 billion dollars.” Of course, the post doesn’t say that many of those debts are decades old and almost impossible to collect. Add the fact that Russia needs friends in this time of sanctions, as well as new African markets for Wagner mercenaries to plunder while supporting dictators, and the picture becomes complete. France was also falsely accused of shutting down the social media, yet nobody reported this “massive scandal”, because it didn’t happen, of course.

It seems no EU country is missed when it comes to Kremlin propaganda. Long gone and non-existent tents of 150 migrants in Brussels are misrepresented as a way of life in the EU, using the fact that Brussels is a home of the most EU institutions. Ireland has been accused of forbidding its citizens reading and following non-mainstream media sources (not true, of course). The Spanish environment minister Teresa Ribera has been accused of using a private plane to take part in a Climate Conference (not true), while Sweden has been accused of being “number 1 country regarding crime in Europe” (not true – Belarus is the number 1). And so it goes.

SEX, GENDER AND CONSPIRACIES – STAPLES OF PROPAGANDA

But, one of the more calculated fascinations of Kremlin propaganda when it comes to the European Union, which also reverberates to N. Macedonia through imported (and sometimes adjusted to the local context) disinformation concerns the issues of sex, nudity, sex education, transgender issues, gender issues and the LGBTQ community. The torrent of this type of disinformation is deliberate and plays into the upcoming election campaign of the presidential and parliamentary elections in May 2024 with a ton of despicable flat out false accusations against the EU, EU member states, EU statements, perverting the EU’s democratic freedoms into something they are not and purposely creating a false mirage as if the EU doesn’t care about the families and family values, cares more about the LGBTQ community instead of “ordinary” citizens, wants to expose children to sex through sex education, represents gender equality as something bad and not worthy of pursuing, etc. This technique plays into the minds of mainly conservative population in the country in a region where most countries do not recognize same sex marriages or even same-sex partnerships. So, any indication of seeking equality for the LGBT community is used as an attack vector against the EU as an originator for such policies. Not to mention the fact that despite the attacks on gay marriage, nobody (neither institution nor a person) has asked for such a change in the marriage law.

And then we arrive at the conspiracy theories. They are also abundant. EU is blamed of vandalizing Christian orthodox cemetery in Croatia, despite the fact that the act has nothing to do with the EU, there are laws against vandalizing cemeteries in every EU country, and nobody from the Orthodox community in Croatia has accused the EU. The European Union is also blamed of trying to “take away the parental rights of the mothers and fathers in Hungary”, because of the opposition against the Hungarian anti-LGBT law that uses not so different language as the similar law in Russia. (Strangely enough, there’s never Kremlin disinformation against Hungary, Hungarian Government or the PM Viktor Orban). Even the 50.00 EUR note is (falsely, of course) attacked of containing “satanic horns”. And so it goes.

NORTH MACEDONIA-BULGARIA DISPUTE

Disinformation against Bulgaria, also play their part. Most of them are of domestic origins these days, but the Kremlin propaganda played important role in stoking the Macedonian-Bulgarian dispute over the interpretation of the joint parts of history and culture, as well as the rights of the tiny Bulgarian minority in North Macedonia. Whenever the dispute would heat up, even Kremlin’s diplomatic social media accounts would be asked to stoke division and widen the dispute by playing both sides against each other by siding with one of them (mainly North Macedonia) and enraging the Bulgarian side by accentuating the positive role of N. Macedonia (as well as Russian role) during the WWII, while reminding that Bulgaria was a Nazi ally, or praising a 19^th century revolutionary against the Ottomans, that both sides revere and consider as their own, but mentioning him only in the context of liberation of then Macedonia.

Kremlin propaganda also uses the former 30 years lasting dispute between North Macedonia and Greece, which was solved in 2018 through the Prespa Agreement, leading to country changing the name from Republic of Macedonia to Republic of North Macedonia. The opponents of this agreement and their dissatisfaction with the name change are an easy target of the Kremlin disinformation, laying the blame for the country’s accession problems in front of the EU’s doors. This narrative pushes a non-existent conspiracy theory of EU and the European powers not wanting to admit the North Macedonia in the EU, despite the name change and despite adopting lot of the rules and laws as demanded by the European Acquis communautaire (EU set of laws) during the long period as a EU candidate country. The heart of this conspiracy is that the EU and the US must be the ones not wanting to admit the country in the EU, and because of that the country will never become an EU member state no matter what we do, because if they wanted to, they could have easily persuaded Greece and Bulgaria not to create obstacles for North Macedonia. This is not true, of course, since both of the North Macedonia EU neighbors are sovereign states, but the conspiracy further claims that it would be impossible for Greece and Bulgaria to create obstacles if they are not permitted or told to do it by the great powers. All of this provides a fertile ground for the Kremlin propaganda, since the supporters of this conspiracy “against Macedonia” look everywhere in hope of finding justification and “proof” of its’ truthfulness. It is hard to find out how deep Kremlin’s involvement goes when causing division between Bulgaria and N. Macedonia, since this is one of those instances where Kremlin hides its hand not to turn both side against Russia, but cause division and stop possible deal between the two countries without being on the forefront.

But, the disinformation being spread in N. Macedonia regarding Bulgaria are not at all nice and some of them have the Кremlin hallmarks like twisting the context. So, we are witnessing reports about Macedonian citizen being killed in Bulgaria (not true, it was natural death), Bulgarian singer being arrested in North Macedonia (not true – its a satire piece, but nobody mentioned that) and disinformation about Bulgaria charging Macedonians regarding the fake bomb threats in the schools from the last spring (it’s a lie).

As long as North Macedonia is outside EU, it is in danger of being Kremlin disinformation target mainly through imported, but also through some home grown disinformation. Kremlin has proven a willingness to use internal crises in the country or spats with neighbors to its own benefit. But, Kremlin is also using the Ukraine war to its own benefit in N. Macedonia just the same like all over Europe. The disinformation travels free and influences citizens all over the continent and the problem here is that the capacities of the Macedonian society are not up to par, not so resilient, like in many other countries. It still one of the Europe’s poorest and smallest countries with a ton of deficits when it comes to democracy and rule of law.

Note: While it is well known rule among disinformation analysts not to repeat the untruths you are writing about in order not to spread them further, this article does quote/paraphrase a selection of anti-EU disinformation to provide the full picture regarding the content and the context of this type of Kremlin propaganda in N. Macedonia. If you need additional information about the mentioned disinformation, almost all the links lead to their respective fact-checks.