DISINFO: Foreign powers tried to instigate a colour revolution in Serbia
SUMMARY
Serbia has experienced the return of colour revolutions over the last days. As in every election, a significant part of the population did not like the result of the legislative elections, but it is far more determinant that certain foreign countries liked it even less. According to the Serbian government, the protests about the election results did not go out of hand thanks in part to information they got from Russian intelligence that protests were being prepared to claim electoral fraud.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative framing popular protests as Western-led colour revolutions (including Ukraine’s Maidan, an allegation that has been debunked multiple times).
There is no evidence backing the claim that protests in Serbia were in any way instigated by foreign powers. They rather seem to be fueled by reports of electoral irregularities confirmed by election observers.
According to the International Election Observation Mission -which included representatives from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), the European parliament and Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe-, “election day [17 December 2023] was smooth but marred by isolated instances of violence, procedural irregularities and frequent allegations of organising and busing of voters to support the ruling party in local elections”. The Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA), a local NGO, has accused the government of organizing the migration of non-residents to influence the election in Belgrade. According to its report, “CRTA observers identified instances of organized transportation of voters, supervised voting, possible identity manipulation of voters in 71 polling stations, or 14 percent of polling stations in Belgrade”. The European Union has called on the Serbian government to probe these allegations and to implement proper reforms in future elections.
In light of these allegations, protests increased in the following days in Belgrade and other cities.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that the US is constantly instigating colour revolutions around the world, that the West plans to destabilise Central Asia, that the US is preparing a Maidan in Georgia, that Euromaidan was a foreign-sponsored violent coup, that the West is preparing another uprising in Syria to change the regime, or that colour revolutions provoked by the US and NATO created migration crisis.