From Russia to Serbia: How RT spreads the Kremlin’s propaganda in the Balkans despite EU sanctions

Update on 7 October 2024 : RT Balkan, which did not respond to RSF’s questions before the publication of the investigation, did state in its public reaction that Jelena Milincic is still its editor-in-chief. RT Balkan has therefore allegedly two editors-in-chief, Jelena Milincic et Nikola Vrzic.

In September 2024, RSF asked RT about the mission of its new Balkan bureau and its relationship with the Russian government. RT’s Moscow headquarters replied immediately, and sarcastically: “We have established RT Balkan with the sole purpose of annoying Reporters Without Borders.” The provocative, political answer shows how RT positions itself as the antithesis of an organisation that defends a free, independent, and pluralist press. Yet it also reveals that RT does not want to disclose information about its objectives or its relationship with the government, which an independent media – as this Russian outlet claims to be – should be able to provide. 

“Because Kosovo is Serbia”

Since its establishment in Moscow in 2005, RT has developed into a network of television channels, websites, and social media accounts publishing content aligned with the Kremlin’s propaganda in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, German and Russian. 

RT Balkan was officially launched on 15 November 2022. Marketed as an online broadcasting service and multimedia website in the Serbian language, it aimed to provide “an alternative perspective on regional and world events,” with plans to expand to a television channel by 2024. 

RT Balkan’s office, which opened in parallel, is not RT’s newest regional bureau. Bureaus had already been established in over twenty cities, including Washington DC, Paris, London, Jerusalem and Berlin. In 2023, the Moscow-based outlet inaugurated a bureau in Algeria as part of a strategy to reinforce its presence in Africa. 

A tweet by RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan hints at RT’s motive to expand to Serbia: “We started RT in the Balkans. Because Kosovo is Serbia.” In the official press release, Simonyan is further quoted as saying: “Perhaps nowhere in the world were we more eagerly awaited than here. And so I would like to speak to our dear Serbian friends in their native language: ‘Браћо, гледајте RT.’ [Brothers, watch RT].” 

In March 2023, in her first interview for the local media — given to Serbia’s public broadcaster — Jelena Milincic, editor-in-chief of RT Balkan at the time, said, “We are not here to operate a website, but to start a television channel. We have been invited to come to Serbia for a very long time […] It is in Serbia’s interest to have a Russian TV station here as well. We currently have a site that is, of course, less successful than Sputnik [a Russian state news agency], but television is the goal [...] RT is seen as the modern child of Russia.” Milincic added that RT Balkan is registered as a Serbian media, even though it is funded from abroad. 

Two years after its launch, RT Balkan still has no television channel. Nevertheless, it has grown into Russia’s main vehicle for spreading propaganda in the Balkans, according to the unanimous opinion of experts researching Russian influence in Bosnia, Kosovo and Montenegro, who were quoted in a recent documentary of the regional media network BIRN.

Deep-rooted relations

There are several explanations for why RT chose Serbia for its Balkan office, and why RT’s representatives are so open about their intentions. Firstly, Russia and Serbia have long-standing relations rooted in a shared culture of Slavic heritage and Orthodox Christianity. This has made Russia popular with part of Serbia’s population and created close relations between Russian politicians and their Serbian counterparts. 

The rise of RT Balkan was also facilitated by the fact that the government controls the bulk of the media market, which it uses to spread its own propaganda. The anti-NATO and anti-EU narratives exacerbated by NATO’s 1999 intervention in Kosovo – whose independence is still not recognized by Serbia – fostered a widespread pro-Russian sentiment in Serbia, making it a receptive market for the Kremlin’s narratives. 

Finally, Serbia is strategically located for RT’s mission to counterbalance the perceived NATO and EU influence in the Balkans. With the exception of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, Serbia is surrounded by EU and/or NATO member states: Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Romania. Several of these neighboring countries have linguistic, cultural, and even media ties with Serbia. 

Even before RT Balkan opened in 2022, most of Serbia’s media outlets emphasized the closeness of Serbians and Russians, and portrayed Russia as a leading military, energy and nuclear power capable of protecting Serbia’s interests. At the same time, the EU and NATO were presented as international institutions in decline. 

RT Balkan has not brought Russian propaganda to Serbia: it has tailored the Kremlin’s narrative to highly receptive local audiences, allowing it to spread more easily throughout the region. 

Who is behind RT Balkan?

As long as RT Balkan lacks a television channel, its website remains the main platform for video content, including clips featuring commentary from the current editor-in-chief, Nikola Vrzic.

Yet, until now, RT Balkan had no company information on its website. In violation of Serbian media laws, it does not list the name of the editor-in-chief or a physical address. There are no bylines naming their journalists and the only contact information is a landline and a generic email address. “An independent nonprofit organization - TV Novosti” is listed where the founder’s name should be. Besides the generic email, the only other address listed is for website visitors interested in working for RT Balkan. In Serbia, it is highly unusual for a news outlet or nonprofit organisation to include the email for job candidates as part of the website’s contact information section. 

An entity named “RT Balkan Television” was registered in the publicly accessible Serbian Commercial Register on 5 November 2023 as a limited liability company. The listed address is not where the newsroom is physically located. 

Although the names of journalists and editors are not readily available, the identities of RT Balkan columnists are prominently displayed. Some are well-known journalists; others are professors, artists, or recognizable public figures. Most of them are known for their right-wing and nationalistic political views. RT hired the Bosnian-Herzegovinian writer Muharem Bazdulj, who vocally supports Serbian nationalist politicians, as well as the Serbian right-wing political scientist Slobodan Antonic, a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade.

Among the twenty-odd names listed for these columnists, there is only one woman: Sanja Domazet, a columnist, writer and literary critic. Yet the person who makes RT Balkan seem like a credible media outlet is also a woman. Ljiljana Smajlovic, a leading journalist for RT Balkan who hosts long video interviews, is the former president of the Association of Serbian Journalists. She is also a former member of the Executive Board of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) which publicly announced her resignation in 2022, asserting that “the collaboration with a propaganda platform financed by the Russian government is not compatible with the goals and the mission of ECPMF.”

Although none of the people involved with RT Balkan have publicly admitted it, a North-Macedonian fact-checking outlet reported that RT and Sputnik are two of the wealthiest editorial teams in Serbia with the best-paid journalists. 

Influencers and campaigns

RT Balkan’s editors and columnists operate as influencers rather than journalists. They ensure the outlet’s visibility and impact within Serbia’s media environment. Nikola Vrzic, the current editor-in-chief of RT Balkan; Filip Rodic, the editor of RT Balkan’s website; and Muharem Bazdulj, RT Balkan’s columnist, are frequent guests on popular talk shows on Serbian national television. Presented as journalists or analysts affiliated with RT Balkan, they are given a wide-reaching platform to legitimize and spread Kremlin propaganda.

What’s more, some of these RT Balkan influencers are actively working to discredit prominent independent journalists in Serbia, a strategy that may benefit certain factions of the Serbian government more than their employers in Russia. Vrzic began targeting KRIK, an online news outlet investigating connections between politics, crime and corruption, after it published an investigative article about connections between a notorious drug lord in Serbia and two members of the Serbian secret police. Vrzic “debunked” KRIK’s report while appearing as a guest on a morning TV program, accusing KRIK of harboring ties with an organisation close to the CIA. A number of media outlets in Serbia quickly quoted Vrzic, repeating his slanderous claim in headlines.

Unlike all other media in Serbia, except for news agencies, RT Balkan’s website does not feature any external ads or sponsored articles that are obviously labeled as advertisements. Yet it does engage in PR campaigns. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, RT Balkan published an advertisement disguised as an article to recruit fighters for the private Wagner group. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) recently published a report on Serbians who joined Russian mercenary groups in Ukraine; one of the men quoted in this journalistic investigation was recruited by a “war reporter.”

In November 2023, RT Balkan ran a traditional advertising campaign in Serbian media and on billboards, called "Open Your Eyes, Clear Your Vision." It read: “Western establishments have long tried to silence our voice by shutting out RT on the air, online and across social media platforms throughout most of Europe. Most of Europe cannot easily see our content. Serbia can. RT Balkan keeps working for you.”

Information laundering

Another technique used by RT’s Belgrade office to spread the Kremlin’s narrative is “information laundering.” Disinformation posted on RT Balkan’s website is presented as journalistic news reporting and subsequently shared by mainstream media. This insidious technique is facilitated by the fact that this content is available free of charge to media outlets suffering structural underfunding across the region.

RT Balkan’s content is quoted and republished by the biggest players in the Serbian media market: the same print, online, and TV tabloids that also spread the Serbian government’s propaganda. The TV channel Pink and the newspaper Kurir are two such examples. Even the media outlets less controlled by the government, such as the public broadcaster RTS, quote RT as a reliable source on news related to Russia. As a result, RT Balkan operates like a state news agency, similar to Russia’s TASS. 

According to an analysis by a private company consulted by RSF, most of the media actively spreading RT Balkan’s propaganda to the six Western Balkan countries were Serbian, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. 

One of RT Balkan’s most virulent stories about Ukraine was laundered in Serbia. In a widely quoted article, RT Balkan questioned whether Ukraine was a democratic country with the headline: A Decision Day: Is Zelensky from today (un)legitimate? The distorted story was based on the fact that presidential elections in Ukraine did not take place despite the expiration of the president’s mandate on 21 May this year. The article, labelled with the byline Dimitrije Mihajlovic, was republished and thus legitimized by several Serbian media outlets. Although the Serbian fact-checking website Raskrinkavanje analysed and contextualized this “news,” Raskrinkavanje’s article had much less traction in Serbian media than RT Balkan’s propaganda. 

Leveraging social networks

Russia's influence in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia is apparent through its ability to promote its narratives on social media. 

RT Balkan has already presented social media platforms as an alternative to their website. After Montenegro extended its ban on RT Balkan in July this year, its homepage prominently featured a banner reading: “They banned us in your country. This is how you can follow us on Telegram.” According to the archived version of Telegram available on the Internet, the content posted by RT Balkan regularly reaches 2,000 views.

At the moment, RT Balkan has approximately 19,500 followers on Instagram, 3,400 on X (formerly Twitter), 70,000 on Facebook and 50,000 on Tik-Tok. 

According to the aforementioned analysis by a private company, Facebook accounts for over half of RT Balkan’s social media traffic. The document notes that this tactic likely involves the use of bots. For this reason, it is difficult to assess with certainty the influence of RT Balkan on social media. 

In December 2022, Youtube was the first social media platform to ban RT Balkan. Recently, the pressure to ban RT has increased due to countermeasures from authorities in both the U.S. and Europe. Accusing RT of “malign influence” in Moldova’s recent elections, the U.S. Department of State sanctioned Rossiya Segodnya, RT’s parent company, and TV Novosti, the entity that manages RT, on 13 September. The arrest of Pavel Durov, Telegram’s CEO, a few weeks earlier in Paris pressured the platform to increase its cooperation with national authorities. Durov has been charged with complicity in criminal activities related to Telegram’s lack of moderation. 

Following the U.S. sanctions and Durov’s arrest, RT and RT Balkan’s accounts were closed by Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and TikTok. In addition, RT Balkan’s X account is inaccessible in EU member states.

Yet RT Balkan has tried to adapt. Just after the U.S. Department of State announced its sanctions, an account called “RT Balkan” started posting content on Odysee, an emerging blockchain-based video platform, well known as a back-up for content creators who have been banned on other platforms.

Navigating sanctions

RT Balkan has also tried to use legal loopholes to circumvent sanctions. Serbia has lent a helping hand in this endeavor – even though, as an EU candidate country, it is expected to align with the policies of European institutions.

In December 2021, RT’s German-language channel started broadcasting via cable and satellite in Germany, claiming this was legal because it had a Serbian licence. The German authorities refuted the claim and later took RT down from the satellite network, eventually blocking access to its website as well. 

A few days after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the EU announced it would “urgently suspend” RT’s broadcasts on its territory on all platforms (cable, satellite, internet, etc.) as part of sanctions against Russia. In June 2023, six months after RT Balkan’s launch, the Council of the EU proceeded to ban the Serbian-language version of the outlet.

Ever since this ban, the EU member states have struggled to uphold the very sanctions they voted for in the EU Council. Although RT’s TV channels are unavailable within EU territory via satellite and cable, its website can be accessed without a VPN in France, as RSF revealed today. 

This is not a recent problem. In February 2024, RFE/RL was able to access RT’s websites and streaming services — including RT Balkan — directly from the headquarters of the EU Council in Brussels without any circumvention tools. 

RT has managed to circumvent the EU’s ban on its website thanks to lack of its application by the national authorities. Meanwhile, RT Balkan has grown its reach in Serbia, where it has never been banned.

The propaganda outlet still publicly pushes its initial objective of setting up a television channel. Late last year, RT announced the launch of a TV station in the neighboring Republic of Srpska, an entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina known for its pro-Russian political leadership and media landscape favoring Russian propaganda. The announcement immediately followed a statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said it was a pity that Russian media were not present in Bosnia and Herzegovina in response to a question from a Bosnian journalist. 

Since late September 2024, RT Balkan has been running a recruitment campaign for “new TV personalities, journalists, reporters, organisers and producers.”