Russian influence from Coronavirus to Kosovo

According to many expert digital forensics in the United States and in several EU countries, Russia has launched an aggressive campaign to spread coronary deninforms throughout the West. Thousands of extinguishing accounts have been made available by the Kremlin, with the aim of disinforming public opinion, especially in Western states and particularly in the United States.

This Russian campaign presents nothing new. Russia, historically, has attempted to take advantage of global health crises in order to first sow disagreements between Americans and within the US alliances and institutions.

According to Stanislav Levchenko, Ladislav Bitman and Juri Bezmenov, former KGB agents who debuted in the US, only 15% of the KGB's activities involved spying, while 85% of the job focused on the department for deninforms and ideological subsidies. The assessment of the performance of KGB agents was actually done based on the number of initiatives they proposed during the year and how effective they were. To achieve these initiatives, the KGB had a multimillion budget and staff of up to 15,000 people, so the dezinform was the heart of the KGB.

The easiest example is when in 1983 The KGB launched news in a non-relevant newspaper called “Patriot” in India that, in effect, the U.S. had produced HIV virus in the laboratory to kill the African-American community and the homosexual community. So it starts with a big lie and the news is launched in a fragial place where no one gets excited about its origin. After several years of deliberate “truce”, news is taken from Moskovite newspapers referring to the newspaper “Patriot”, India, and then publishes “Dialily Telegraph” in London, and in 1986, through television, news is also broadcast in the United States. In the meantime, the KGB finds a seven-time scientist (or “idiot” as identified in one of the rules in the KGB manual) to scientifically confirm that HIV was produced in American labs. Dr. Jacob Segal a live doctor with the USSR living in Berlin. News was repeated for years, even when the U.S. confirmed that the KGB was behind this disinformation, of course, that the Russians denied. The effect had already been achieved, distrust had been created because millions of US citizens began to believe the news or at least get into confusion.

It's not just the situations of global health crises that Russian services abuse for geopolitical gain, and it's not just been initiated by the KGB during the Cold War.

The same operating system continues today from this day from FSB (e) Putin's (KGB heir). Upon coming to power, Putin, as a former KGB agent, made sure that the KGB, has access to information through the intelligence agencies. In this regard, in 2005 he founded television “Russia Today”, and the news agency “Sputnik”, and later the fake social media profile factory, known as “Internet Research Agency”, which also deals with launching “phaque news”.

In 2016 this agency launched two “face news”, on two different Facebook pages in Houston. In one, Muslims were inviting the Muslims to the mosque's defence protests in Houston (Texas), while on the other pages on Facebook invited extremist rightists to protest in front of the mosque against the “ilamisation of Texas”. Protests were deliberately invited at the same time. Being manipulated, the two sides did not know they would meet in protest at the same time, and as a result, the event was overcome by violence. All this was supported by thousands of fake accounts on social networks through “Internet Research Agency”, in Moscow.

The same was true in the case of “Pizage Conspiranty” where Russian hackers hacked John Podestes' e-mails, chief of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign in 2016 and misused communication with Pizzerie owner “Comet” in Washington, and then washed up the big lie that Democratic Party officials were sexually abusing children in the podrum of this pizza (Pizzereria had no power). However, until the lie was discovered, the damage was caused, because one day an American rightist extremist believed the news, in revenge went to Pizzeria “Comes” in Washington D.C. and fired rifles, while this event directly affected the US electoral process.

What's the purpose of Russian disinfectants regarding Coronavirus?

Consistently the goal of the former KGB, but also of today's FSB has been that through dezinform campaigns like these the highest to bring Western states into contradiction. To contribute to deepening divisions within Western democracies, be they political, economic, cultural, social, geographical or linguistic. Such diverse divisions exist in every Western society: young people against the old, poor against the rich, ecremists against liberals, contradictions about religion, etc. Russians are citizens that they are no longer able to fight directly with the West, and especially not with the United States, which are much stronger militarism, so just through launching such deninforms and various ideological subversions, Russians are aimed at raising tensions within Western societies and especially in the United States (as if the case of HIV, the case in Houston or “PaziGate Conspiracan <1>). The goal is to change the public's perception of reality, demoralize them and destabilise society in order to overcome those democracies from within as long as possible. All these subsyform campaigns, so full of “fake news”, are made with very little investment through cyber attacks with extinguishing accounts on social networks supported by “Russia Today”, in its editions not only in English. These campaigns are largely organised by the “Internet Research Agency”, in Moscow. Russia's major goal is to change the current balances of world powers.

Russia's disinformation campaign for coronavirus is also in the post. The dezinformation campaign promotes unconventional theories that the U.S. is behind the new eruption of Coronavirus in an apparent attempt to damage America's image worldwide and introduce bitterness and distrust among American citizens. Imagine what sensitivity an American citizen diagnosed with coronavrus may have when he hears the news that his government “produced”, this virus.

Therefore, the entire Russian disinstallation ecosystem is at stake and efforts co-ordinated through thousands of social media accounts to spread coronary deninforms, disrupting global efforts to combat the epidemic and in particular, trying to discredit the United States.

These underlying accounts on social networks falsely claim that the United States is conducting a <x0-economic struggle against China”, and that the virus is a biological weapon produced by the CIA. The goal is to raise the alarm for this “risking”, young American on a global level. In addition, “Russia Today”, in its English-language editions destined for American public opinion, has launched disinformations that testing 5G causes brain cancer, autism and Alzheimer's disease.

Russia manufactures these stories to distance itself from the terrible state of its history. Alcoholism, HIV, and tuberculosis are on an epidemic level in Russia, and yet the government did nothing to help its people, preferring to humiliate and imprison its population. If Russia and the next states of the USSR were truly concerned about people's health, they would certainly not have exposed millions of people to deadly radiation, lying and hiding for the Chernobyl disaster. Furthermore, Russia continues to lie about a dangerous nuclear explosion near the town of Severosvinsk that occurred in August 2019 after a failed test of a nuclear missile.

In February, this pandemic also brought a “infode”, where most of these disinfectors have addresses in Moscow. Meanwhile, there are obvious differences in the Kremlin deinformation strategies in the face of local and international audiences. Messages targeting the Russian local audience describe the virus as a form of foreign aggression, for example, claiming that the Coronavirus originated in secret American or Western labs

Messages targeting international audiences (mainly in English, Italian, Spanish and Arabic) follow a different approach, aimed at promoting distrust among US and EU authorities, health care systems, international institutions and scientific experts.

And in the Western Balkans, titles such as “Virus were dominated in a laboratory to weaken China and Iran “, but beyond that, there are some risks related to the spread of coronary dezination in the Western Balkans. Through coronavirus, election debates could be armed to discredit political opponents with conspiracy theories, for example in the context of the upcoming elections in Serbia and North Macedonia. At the same time, this could also be used against migrants, but it can also be used by foreign services to manipulate local information spaces.

Geopolitical context in the Western Balkans and US and Russian interest inside it

In the context of the Western Balkans, Putin is aware that the United States does not allow Russia's military return to warm waters (Messand) through the Balkans. This is because the US has set this as one of their main strategic goals for the Balkans. This and other American targets are within US strategic rails for the Western Balkans, set in the early 1990s, and regardless of who comes to power in the US, Republican or Democrat, American foreign policies do not come out of these tracks. Not only the administration of President Trump, but any future administration will require reaching the Kosovo-Serbia agreement as soon as possible. This is because, the fact that there is no war, does not mean there is peace in the Balkans, and this especially, is related to the Kosovo-Serbia agreement. The current state of affairs without agreement between the two countries continues to provide a good ground for Russian secret services to use, with their rigors, every possible division as political and other, to destabilise Kosovo and through it, possibly, other parts of the region. Consequently, any dynamic kind of political chaos in Kosovo can only coincide with Russia, but not with the US. Russia, therefore, fears that eventually an agreement is reached. And, if that happens tomorrow, Russia is excluded from the Balkans. It is excluded because it has remained exclusively linked to Serbs and Serbia. Within this context, another goal is to have Russian demands to lift the fee, the other of Western partners. Despite the same demand, their intentions stand out. In fact, the Russians in this case have completely ignored the subjectivity of Kosovo and the institutions, using irreverent terminism. These are the Russians- they don't offer solutions, they put gas in the fire. The smoke of this fire has created them in the region.

That is one of the main reasons why the United States insists on the Kosovo-Serbia agreement, because it is the United States that has invested mostly in peace and stability in the Balkans. We remember that regardless of whether the republicans or the ruling Democrats were in the last three deficits, they were always the U.S. leaders and principal sponsors of projects that the Western Balkans have put on the path to normality. This has been achieved through Dayton, Rambouillet, the bombing of Serbia, the accession of Slovenia and Croatia to NATO, the independence of Montenegro, the independence of Kosovo, the entry of Albania and Montenegro into NATO, and finally, the achievement of the Macedonia-Greek agreement and the membership of northern Macedonia into NATO. For declaring Montenegro's independence and reaching the Macedonia-Greece agreement, of Northern Macedonia's membership in NATO, Albanians have had a special role, while Albanians' co-operation with the US is not discussed for Albania's accession to NATO and independence from Serbia. Therefore, our constructive co-operation with the Trump administration, to reach the Kosovo-Serbia agreement, must continue because it is our interest, but also the strategic goal of the US in the Western Balkans. Simply, then, it is not the issue of border movements between Kosovo and Serbia, but the issue of moving borders between the American and Russian hemispheres of influence. The realisation of the deal, therefore, would ultimately downplay the Russian destructive influence in the region (Exclude Serbia and Dodik) and also minimize the impact on the Balkans of several other states outside Euro-Atlantic orbit. But since the Western Balkans is the last station targeting Russia in its geostrategic direction in Europe, there are other available mechanisms through which European and US governments can advance their common interests and values in Europe. One of them is the <x0.0th Seas initiative”. This initiative promotes practical projects to approach European states limited by the Seas of Baltic, Adriatic and Black Sea in the fields of energy, transport and digitalisation of European communication networks, and as such may weaken Russia's ability to undermine governments, institutions, security and European democracy because it is viewed by the map of the signatory states of this initiative, visually seems like a curtain that divides the European Union with Russia's territory. But let's go back to Russian intelligence once again.

From the analysis into the above context, the impression should not be given that such services are very professional and advanced in relation to others. We remember the case of “PizzaGate Conspiranty”, Washington, when they were denouncing that democratic party officials have sexually abused children in the Pizzerium basement “Commet”, while Pizzeria had no power. Or in the case of dezinforming in the newspaper”Patrios”, in India that the U.S. had produced HIV. In that official writing of State Department, they have immediately noted spelling errors, such as: It was incorrectly written in English “virus flu”, rather than being “minus virus”, which indicated that the writing was not written by someone whose mother tongue is English. So, we don't talk about professional and wise services, but we don't stop at their actions through disinformation of blackmail. While talking about their professionalism in the case of Kosovo, we remember that the Russian candidate of the EC for Kosovo rapporteur Alexey Kondratyev was injured in an incident in Kosovo in 2001 as part of the Russian Army intelligence service, while Russian agent Jana Minockina was caught stealing from a shop in Kosovo. So these are the members of the Russian secret services. In a word, dirty, not professional.

When talking about blackmail, many authors in the West have written articles and analyses that Russia has been conditioning Serbia to sign the agreement on the construction of the Russian gas pipeline through Serbia, only eight days after Kosovo's declaration of independence, between former Serbian Prime Minister Kostunica and then Russian Deputy Chairman Medvedev, otherwise they would accept Kosovo's independence. So they are able to blackmail Serbia too, so they do not hesitate to exploit any fragility political situation in Kosovo to destabilise the situation. Consequently, the Russians do not view Serbian interests, but their interests. Currently, Serbia has the means by which it destabilise not only Kosovo. Whatever the case, failure to reach Kosovo- Serbia creates more and more ground for Russia's subversive and disinformative actions in Kosovo and beyond, similar to the models we described above, such as in the situations of Russian HIV virus deninforms, for protests in Houston or the latter with Coronavirus. This does not mean that the Russians have attracted opponents of the Kosovo-Serbia agreement, but have found ways to sow doubt about reaching this agreement. In Serbia, radicals openly oppose this agreement, but it is known they are pro-Russian.

Transmitting and repeating the Russian dezinformation of 1983 for years in the media that if the U.S. has produced HIV to kill Africans and the gay community, it's why today's day in the United States, even some American artists are still on the run and continue to sing this <x0fake issue issue of news“, and that this disinform is also inspired today for different American film production series. For the same reason that the dezinformation repeated in connection with the 2016 protest in Houston for a certain time, many citizens there continued to remain insane and did not believe that Russia was behind that protest. Transmiting and repeating through local meds of coronavrus dezinforms that the source may have without a „phact checks“ (renewation of facts) can have the effect „HIV“and „Huston“, both of the citizens of Kosovo. So the effect of changing the perception of reality about what is actually the truth about pandemic in the world and this cannot remain less influential in our socio-political context. Consequently, media should be more careful and more selective in selecting information that circulates in international media about coronavirus.

(Autori is a politician and professor at the Department of Political Sciences at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Pristina).