Havenier said it is intended to undermine Kosovo's democracy, but who are foreign actors who want to undermine Kosovo's democracy?

Kosovo is not immune to this trend that has affected the whole world.

As false information is created in various ways and by each, the situation is complicated when states are introduced, with the aim of harming opponents, or achieving their interests.

Norick Selmani, leader of the Picasso Analytics company, which monitors media content in the Balkans, has told Radio Free Europe that it is no secret that Russia and its friendly states sponsor anti-Western campaign in Kosovo.

“There are international centres, which are not friends of Kosovo, which do not believe that one day Kosovo can be prorus, but what they can do is to disperse evaporating against the West, to spread a scepticism to Western partners. This is the medium and short-term goal of these” centers.

Commenting on the statement by US Ambassador Jeffrey Hovenier, who has declared that foreign actors want to undermine democracy in Kosovo by exploiting ethnic divisions, Selmani has said this phenomenon is present throughout the Balkans.

Kosovo is no exception from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Northern Macedonia, and if there is an ultrasensive area, it is always the area of interethnic relations. One who wants to destabilise a state, a garrison, will always try through violating interethnic relations”.

Ramadan Ilazi, director of research at the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies (QKSS), has told Radio Free Europe this week that disinformative campaigns are deliberately distributed in Kosovo to strain interethnic relations.

We have campaigns aimed at creating distrust among the Serb community especially towards public institutions in Kosovo and aiming to create a kind of perception as if in the north [of Kosovo] we have an ongoing situation of response to citizens there”.

Telegram and Facebook

Dren Grguri, legalist at the Journalism Department at the University of Pristina, also mentions Serbia at the same level as Russia, as a malicious state towards Kosovo and its allies.

“If we talk about the Serb community in Kosovo, the Telegram is the platform where many dezinforms are distributed for Kosovo, and they become viral, especially when there are tensions in the north, we see that waves of dezinforms probably even precede the” tensions.

He has said the dezinforms lie different-other in Kosovo, because different sources of information are: For Serbs in Kosovo, it's the Telegram text app, according to him, filled with Serb-Russian propaganda and some Serbian media in Kosovo and Serbia, while Albanian people are Albanian-speaking televisions and social Facebook networks.

The most dangerous part is when we're sometimes looking at Albanian-speaking, portal media, which distributes statements by Russian or Serbian state officials, and which simply conveys unconventionally, in the sense that when there's manipulation, or when it's allegedly facts. This is dangerous, because information comes to the mother tongue”.

Gergur also believes that Russia has a host of tools through which it extends its influence, in addition to major media such as Sputnik or Russia Today.

These two Russian state media have been banned from broadcasting in Kosovo, in several countries in the region, and in the European Union, following Moscow's war in Ukraine. However, in some countries, including Kosovo, they have been accessible even this year.

China as an additional factor

Besides Russia, in a report by the Kosovo National Democratic Institute's office (NDI), published this year about the country's dezinforms circulation, China's harmful efforts have also been cited.

According to the findings, the state media of both countries have played a significant role in spreading malicious agents: Russian media have cited Serbian nationalism in Kosovo and have drawn false parallels to the Crimea to undermine Kosovo's independence, while Chinese media have criticised Western involvement and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in Kosovo, portraying them as destabilizing forces, and questioning their legitimacy.

Can Disinforms Be Fighted?

Not entirely.

But to minimize them, Norick Selmani suggested:

Adjusting the field of online communication with legislation, avoiding censorship, but maintaining quality
The Extinction of Hate by Politics
Establish transparency for media financing.

Dren Grguri has suggested that all have questions about what they see and hear and ask themselves:

Who Is the Information Author?
Am I seeing the same information in other relevant media?
What resources are you relying on?

But, above all, according to him, it's media education.

This is also the result of a lack of critical judgment on content and media education, and these are creating a suitable environment for wanting to use for their own purposes”.

In Kosovo, media education is elective in some pre-university schools, and there is no national curriculum for it.

Besides connoisseurs of the field, Russian aims for destabilising Kosovo through dezinforms are often cited by top state figures.

According to them, Russia aims to destabilise Balkans to disorient NATO from Moscow's war in Ukraine, while Serbia is aimed at fulfilling territorial ambitions. /Radio Free Europe/