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The Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of the Russian Federation tried to amaze the world with the insight that the current unrest in Serbia with the active participation of young people is largely a product of the subversive activities of the European Union and its member states. On September 15, the SVR Press Bureau published its latest press release dedicated to Serbia, under the title “The European Union is preparing a Serbian “Maidan”. According to the data received by the SVR, a special role in this process is played by the so-called independent media, which receive European money. The SVR published a list of the 13 most dangerous media outlets, which receive solid financial support from Brussels. Among them are liberal publications operating in Serbia since the 1990s, and regional Internet portals specializing in local news from the cities of South-East Serbia, which do not hide their grants from BIRN, the European Union and USAID: Serbian news portals FoNet, RAM Network, Vreme, Juzne Vesti, Slobodna rec, Boom93, Podrinske, Freemedia, Indjija, SOinfo, FAR, Storyteller and the NGO Link.
It is not clear on the basis of what data Russian intelligence officers decided to include, for example, FAR (“Lighthouse”) and Storyteller among the most formidable resources that incite protest sentiments, which the Serbian authorities should be wary of. The small FAR with an audience of 5,000 people is entirely oriented towards the Bulgarian community in South Serbia, and “Storyteller”, launched by a Slovak journalist in Vojvodina in 2018, does not even attract 2,000 people. However, the SVR does not mention the social media segments, in which an entire network has already grown up, coordinating the blockade activities in Serbia.
The children’s section of the Bulgarian-Serbian multimedia portal FAR is funded by the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the project “Media Pluralism, Freedom of Expression and Democracy” on the portal is funded with funds from the Bulgarian Development Assistance. It is explicitly stated that the opinions in the media projects are independent and do not reflect the positions of the bodies that finance them. The Consul General of the Republic of Bulgaria in Niš, Dimitar Tsanev, in a special statement for FAR points out that for another year the Bulgarian government signs agreements with organizations from the non-governmental sector and with institutions from Serbia, with which assistance is provided to Serbia with the aim of its development on the path of European integration.
There are 18,543 Bulgarians in Serbia according to a census conducted in 2011, and their number is constantly decreasing due to migration or “mimicry”. “I am sure that more than 100,000 Bulgarians currently live in Serbia”, says the chairman of the National Council for the Bulgarian Minority in Serbia, Stefan Stoykov. He adds that in his opinion this is a matter of “mimicry”, not “assimilation”, since the Bulgarian minority “is not subject to any repression by the Serbian state”.
Apparently, due to fear of repression, representatives of Serbian organizations, funded from the budget of the Republic of Serbia reject the term “assimilation”, which is used by Sofia. The chairman of the Cultural and Information Center of the Bulgarians in Bosilegrad, Ivan Nikolov, fully committed to the cause of the Bulgarian minority, told the Belgrade newspaper Danas that “hiding one’s Bulgarian origin is a way of survival in Serbia.” “National self-awareness is not acquired at birth, it is created and nurtured through the upbringing and education system. The number of Bulgarians (in Serbia) began to decline sharply with the abandonment of the Bulgarian language as the mother tongue in primary schools in Bosilegrad and Dimitrovgrad (Tsaribrod), and the destruction (privatization) of factories, enterprises and farms deprived them of survival,” Nikolov emphasizes. He adds that not only is the Bulgarian minority decreasing according to census data, but the Hungarian, Croatian and Montenegrin minorities are also reporting a decrease of two-thirds. According to him, national minorities in Serbia have long been viewed not as a factor in Serbian statehood, but as a danger that someone must eliminate.
The regions with a concentration of Bulgarians – Bosilegrad and Dimitrovgrad (Tsaribrod) in southern Serbia are the most socially and economically backward regions in the country. Bulgaria, despite its desire, is not able to contribute to raising the living standards of its compatriots in neighboring Serbia, since it itself has underdeveloped municipalities along the common border.
he media outlet FAR that has been publishing in Bulgarian and Serbian for nine years, covers both student protests and rallies of members and sympathizers of the ruling parties who oppose the student blockades and protests in the region with a Bulgarian minority. The media outlet is critical of both the Bulgarian state for the stagnation of the Program for Assistance to Bulgarian Communities Abroad, and of Belgrade for neglecting the problems of the Bulgarian minority. Petar Videnov, editor-in-chief of FAR in Dimitrovgrad (Tsaribrod), commented to the newspaper “Danas” that the media outlets are facing difficulties with financing, as well as attempts by the state and local authorities to place them under their control at the expense of professional and objective information.
On the occasion of the SVR press release, FAR issued a special statement. The accusations of Russian intelligence in “brainwashing the youth” are defined as “to put it mildly, offensive and dangerous”. In Serbia, where state support is mainly provided to media outlets that defend only the interests of the ruling party, “our media outlets are forced to finance their livelihoods with funds from other available sources, including donors from the European Union”.
“As one of the most authoritative means of informing the Bulgarian national minority in Serbia, FAR has been working dedicatedly since its establishment in 2016 to promote good neighborly relations between Serbia and Bulgaria and culture, dialogue and tolerance in environments where FAR is read and followed,” the media outlet’s reaction states. The employees of FAR, whose income is more or less at the level of the guaranteed minimum wage in Serbia, reject with disgust the attempt to discredit the independent media in Serbia and proudly point out that objective reporting is one of the foundations of a free democratic society and that such attacks, no matter where they come from, will not change the way our media work”.
One can only speculate how small local portals of the Bulgarian diaspora came into the sights of the powerful SVR. In any case, the small media house FAR resolutely and “proudly” opposes the Russian intelligence mastodon.
The editorial staff of Storyteller also reacted to the disproportionate blow from the SVR. “When the names of small and independent editorial offices that work in the public interest appear in the documents of foreign services and on the front pages of local tabloids, this is not only untrue, but also dangerous,” says the reaction of Storyteller, founded in 2018, as an online portal serving the multilingual Slovak-Serbian community in Vojvodina, Serbia and the Slovak diaspora. It is considered particularly problematic that the “independent editorial offices” listed by the SVR are presented as a monolithic political project, while at the same time ignoring the fact that each of them – from FoNet and Vreme, through Juzne Vesti and Boom93, to us, Storyteller – has its own identity, history, editorial policy and mission. What unites us is that we work professionally and in the public interest, and not in the interest of any party or authority,” concludes Storyteller. By the way, all donors to the bilingual Serbian-Slovak media outlet dedicated to marginalized communities are listed in the most detailed way on the media outlet’s website.
Russian intelligence officers, who are trying to understand the realities of the region in which they operate, should be aware that small local media outlets and unknown NGOs do not aim to and cannot overthrow Vučić, especially not through a “color revolution.” And the point is not about Vučić, but about forcing the central government in Belgrade and local authorities to comply with their own Constitution and laws guaranteeing the rights of their own citizens who ethnically belong to neighboring nationalities.
