AThis Thursday, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will embark on a three-day trip to Southeast Europe, which is primarily intended to demonstrate presence. The signal is: Europe is keeping a close eye on the region and will react decisively to a crisis. In the background is the fear that Russia could try to destabilize the region as a kind of diversionary maneuver.
Baerbock will initially hold talks in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Kosovo on Thursday, and then in Belgrade on Friday. Talks will conclude on Saturday in the Moldovan capital Chisinau, where the government has its back to the wall financially because of the large number of refugees from Ukraine.
The most difficult part of the trip is probably the one in Belgrade and indirectly the start in Sarajevo. Serbia and the Bosnian Serb Republic, which belongs to Bosnia, are the only states or parts of Europe outside of Putin’s sphere of influence where there is sympathy for Putin’s war against Ukraine among a significant part of the population and in the media.
Milorad Dodik, the President of the Bosnian Serbs, recently told the FAZ (which, however, was conducted a few days before the Russian attack), that he was “honoured” to have good relations with Putin. Pictures of a demonstration with thousands of participants in Belgrade, who marched through the city with Russian flags, pictures of Putin and Z signs, went around the world. A similarly large demonstration days later against Russia’s war policy received less attention abroad. Reports of Serb volunteers wanting or already fighting for the Kremlin in Ukraine, while likely accurate, are more a media coverage phenomenon than a numerically relevant factor in Putin’s bloodscapes.
Media have turned Putin into an icon
The basic mood of Slavic-Orthodox ties with Russia, which goes back at least to the early 19th century, has been systematically fueled and reinforced in Serbia for about ten years by the media belonging to President Aleksandar Vučić’s system of rule. Broadcasters, newspapers and portals that cooperate closely with and are subsidized by the government have turned Putin into an icon. Those who have followed this over the years could hardly be surprised when a Belgrade tabloid run by Vučić’s personal friend broke the news on the first day of the recent Russian war with the headline: “Ukraine has attacked Russia!”. Since then it has mostly been reported in a similar sense.
Rare resistance: sprayers in Belgrade have added “murderer” to the word “brother”.
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Image: Reuters
Little is known abroad that Russia has had a base of operations in Serbia for more than ten years: the so-called “Russian-Serbian Humanitarian Center” in the southern Serbian city of Niš, located right next to the local airport. Disaster control measures have been officially coordinated there since 2012, for example in the event of forest fires, earthquakes or floods. In fact, the center has repeatedly made an appearance by providing rapid assistance in the event of natural disasters.
Of course, the perception also has to do with the fact that Vučić’s media do their utmost to promote the projection of Russian “soft power” in Serbia. Russian aid is reported on the front pages and at the beginning of the evening news, while much more extensive EU measures are either kept secret or mentioned only in passing. The suspicion that the base in Niš also serves Moscow as a spy center or as the nucleus of a future military base has not yet been confirmed. Unsurprisingly, journalists who were granted access after registering were only able to discover fire engines, tents and similar equipment on the site, but not military infrastructure.