Russian propaganda media have a small outreach in Serbia, but they fill the information space in an organized way with their materials, such as short videos without captions or authorship.
Biljana Sahrimanjan-Obradovic, an analyst with the Serbian Center for Strategic Analysis, stated this in an interview with Ukrinform.
“RT has a very small reach, but its materials and products find their way to mainstream media without attribution to RT. The information space in Serbia consists of a huge amount of pro-Russian materials, such as short videos without authors or creator signatures. They are edited and translated into Serbian and then placed into the information sphere. Preparing those materials is, in many cases, organized. Also, pro-Russian opinion makers through RT have access to propaganda message boxes,” she said.
The pundit noted that Russia’s goal is to prevent Serbia from joining the European Union, so they are exploiting anti-NATO sentiment to achieve anti-EU goals.
The analyst is certain that the result of banning RT would be to counteract Russian influence operations and limit their access to mainstream media.
“It is a very complex but urgently needed measure. RT acting in Serbia as “legitimate” media which should not be the case… In that sense, we should look at Sputnik and RT as knowledge bases for anti-EU information activities which covertly and overtly participate in anti-western activities,” the expert emphasized.
She also expressed belief that media partnership between Serbian and Ukrainian media outlets could challenge the dominance of Russian content in Serbia.
As reported, Russia Today (RT) in 2024 spent on propaganda targeting international audiences a record amount since its inception in a bid to spread the Kremlin’s narratives across the world.
Source: Plenty of Russian articles in Serbian media space, despite very small outreach - analyst
