DISINFO: NATO deliberately worsens the situation in Kosovo to blackmail Serbia, as it did with the Maidan in Ukraine
SUMMARY
NATO is deliberately worsening the situation in Kosovo to blackmail Serbia. The West, through NATO countries, is trying to exacerbate a conflict between Pristina and Belgrade to benefit from the situation, promoting chaos in the same way as before the Maidan Square coup. This alert could be artificially fabricated by NATO countries for Serbia to change its political line towards what the West expects.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives about NATO, Kosovo and the Maidan square protests in 2013 and 2014 as a coup.
The claims are not backed up with evidence, baselessly blaming NATO, a frequent target of pro-Kremlin disinformation, for a complicated situation that has been long brewing despite EU and US efforts to defuse tensions. NATO didn’t play any role in increasing those tensions. In fact, both Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vuciv and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti requested some action from NATO to play some role to address the current crisis.
On the other hand, Russian officials, media and Telegram channels have been trying for a long time to inflame tensions around Kosovo and the Western Balkans. On 15 November 2022, Russia launched its new online channel RT Balkan in Serbian language, which RT head Margarita Simonyan presented with the words: “Because Serbia is Kosovo”. According to a recent report by the European Council on Foreign Relations, "[the Russian media's] aim is mainly to attack the legitimacy of Kosovo’s statehood, but also to fuel ethnic tensions by portraying the Serb community in Kosovo as victims of an abusive central government.”
Pro-Kremlin outlets frequently portray the 2014 Maidan square popular protests as a foreign-backed, a crucial part of its years-long disinformation campaign against Ukraine which culminated in its 2022 invasion of the country. Repeating previous baseless allegations as established facts while introducing minor variations, as in this case, is a frequent pro-Kremlin disinformation technique.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that having NATO in Kosovo is a risk for the population as the West is expert in creating conflict, that the EU wants to expand its imperialism in the Balkans, that the West has promoted separatism in Yugoslavia, that Pristina is entirely responsible for the tension in Northern Kosovo, or that the West showed double standards with its treatment of Kosovo and Crimea.