The Guardian: Serbian extremists have Russia's support to cause trouble in Balkans

At the beginning of the analysis, Colborn claims that the analysis focuses on investigative journalism and monitoring of extreme right-right projects in Central and Eastern Europe, and that this is how different findings have come to be.

In the Balkans, we see the extreme right from Serbia supporting Ukraine's bloody invasion of Russia. These groups are not only helping to light fire in support of Russia's war, they are also receiving Russian assistance to postpone their risky agenda to a unstable part of Europe”, their assessment.

As Russia's war in Ukraine drags on, the Kremlin has supported some of the most dangerous right-wing forces in the Balkans. In April 2022, thousands of Serbs took to the streets of Belgrade to protest their government's support for Russia's suspension of the UN Human Rights Council because of the invasion in Ukraine. At the rally, demonstrators waved Russian and Serbian flags and cheered slogans such as “Serbs and Russians -- brothers forever! ”

Protests in the Serbian capital were organised by the far-right group, “Narodna Patrola” and its leader, Damjan Knezevic, who organised several more pro-Russian rallies. Just a few weeks later, Knezevic and another leader of the National Patrol traveled from Serbia to Russia. They spent a week there at the invitation of several Russian media organisations including one led by Putin's notorious associate, Yevgeny Pigozin, writes Colborne in The Guardian.

Many Serbs believe Russia has long acted as a protector of Serbia and its interests, both countries share Slavic roots and people in both Russia and Serbia think the West has demonised them. Knezevic argued that Russia, along with Serbia in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, was unjustly portrayed as aggressors when they were only trying to protect their ethnic brothers. Knezzhevq and friends flooded social networks with pro-Russian warnings.

Such support involves more than mere words or groups. In May of this year, the small Neofashist group “The Serbian Action” published a video on their YouTube channel documenting a visit to St Petersburg they had made several months ago. Several members of the Serbian “ ” traveled there at the invitation of the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM), which is officially named a terrorist group in the United States and Canada. In the video, RIM leader Denis Gariev shoots and boasts that he teaches nearly 1000 Russians a year at the movement training center. Advertisement

A day after the Serbian “Action” published that video, Knezevic appeared at a press conference in St Petersburg. With it was Aleksandar Lisov, head of the Serbian-Russian cultural and intelligence centre”, charged with threats against Russians living in Serbia.

But what particularly interested Colborn was the place where the conference was taking place -- the press centre of “-Patrito Media Group”, a media conglomerate whose board of directors is run by Prigozy. It was one of three media organisations that the National Patrol claimed to have invited to Russia (the others included the notorious Russian state media RT RT ], for which Knezevic conducted an interview in studios é and pro-Kremlin Plesomolskaya Prvda).

“Prigozy is a man who is very well known. He's a former convict and trusted Putin while being sanctioned by the US and being wanted by the FBI for the role in Russian intervention in the 2016 elections. He made billions of dollars in Russia while the government contracts him for recruiting members of Wagner, a private military company linked to multiple alleged war crimes in Africa and Ukraine”, the journalist said. Advertisement

He stresses that it would be wrong to ignore relations between the rightist Serb extreme and Russia as meaningless or unworthy of further attention, especially when Europride protests are taken into account.

“Human Rights Organisations warned earlier this year that extreme right-wing extremism was on the rise in Serbia, Europride, an international LGBTI event scheduled to be held in Belgrade this month, faced a series of violent threats from the extreme right as Serbian President Aleksandar Vuciq has announced he will be cancelled”, he said.

He later touched on the situation in the region, “in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, where nationalist tensions threaten to break up the country, has elections in October. Montenegro, which split from Serbia in 2006, may also have new elections. Disagreements on its national identity continue to disturb her, among Montenegrins who are more pro-independence and self-identified Serbs who want closer relations with neighbouring Serbia. Tensions with Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and is home to a small number of Serbs remain as the hottest areas in the region. Unfortunately, this is the right time for the Serbian extreme to cause trouble if they want to, and they have friends in Russia to help”, Colborne concluded. Advertisement

He also believes Russia has already started helping.

The English-language “Documentary, which was recently broadcast to RT, gave Knezevqi and other Serbian far-right figures a platform to express their views unequivocally. Just as Russia is releasing the Russian world through demilitarisation and demilitarisation”, says Misa Vacic, an extreme right figure long claimed to be linked to Vuciqi and the ruling Serbian Progressive Party “Serbs are right, through special operations, to create our Serbian world”.

Finally, Colborne warns that we ignore the extreme right in the Balkans for our risk.

Their ideas are based on the same dissatisfaction and complaints that sparked the wars to break Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but now they have found more people worldwide, including Russia, ready to encourage and support. It would not be the first time the US State Department claims in a recently declassified cablegram that Russia has spent $300m since 2014 in an effort to influence politicians and others worldwide, including the Balkans. Russia may not have lit this fire, but it is more than happy to help fuel it.