The traces of the blocked Russian 'Voice of Europe' in Bosnia and Serbia.

 

His party, which split after the December parliamentary, provincial, and Belgrade city elections, and then expelled its leader Branimir Nestorović from membership, garnered 4.8 percent of the vote in the elections, securing 13 seats in the national parliament.

 

It was a success of a political narrative marked by the spread of conspiracy theories, such as denying the existence of the coronavirus and justifying Russian aggression in Ukraine.

 

 

Stanojević further demonstrated this when he founded the "Another Ukraine" movement for Serbia in the middle of last year. The movement is led by pro-Russian politician from Ukraine, Viktor Medvedchuk (Viktor Volodymyrovych Medvedchuk), who is currently in Russia, as he faces charges of treason in Ukraine.

 

According to official registry data, the representation of "Another Ukraine" (the name of the branch in Serbian) lists its activities as "establishing mutually beneficial cooperation between the peoples of Serbia, Russia, and Ukraine."

 

Medvedchuk is also associated with the "Voice of Europe," a media outlet that came under scrutiny by the Czech government at the end of March. Czech institutions revealed that a broad operation to spread Euroscepticism was conducted through a company registered in Prague.

 

While the Czech Republic is investigating allegations, including payments to certain local politicians involved in such operations, as of March 27, attempting to access the "Voice of Europe" website results in a message saying "this site can't be reached." According to the Czech government's assessment, "toxic content has been blocked," including Stanojević's interview.

 

The owner of the online media outlet www.voiceofeurope.com is hidden from the public, according to website registration data. The ownership history of this media outlet, which has been operating since 2017, is also obscured. Archived pages visible in the "Web Archive" internet database do not contain any imprint of the media outlet or the names of article authors.

 

According to data from Similarweb, a platform specialized in analyzing internet traffic, the "Voice of Europe" website had nearly half a million visits from December to the end of February. On average, around 100,000 internet users read its content each month.

 

 

Stanojević commented on the interview on the blocked website:

 

In a statement to RSE (Radio Free Europe), Stanojević says he cannot recall anything specific about the interview for "Voice of Europe."

 

"During that period, many journalists contacted me, and I know that this team came to Belgrade, and I talked about how Serbia could be a good hub between Brussels and Moscow," says Stanojević.

 

He adds that he is not aware of anything related to the investigation regarding payments to politicians, nor does he know if Voice of Europe has any connections with Medvedchuk.

 

Stanojević emphasizes that he is not giving up on "Another Ukraine":

 

"I lead the association, and I will continue to do so. It was established in agreement with numerous friends I still have in Ukraine. It's natural for me to assist people from Ukraine, but this assistance mainly involves various consultations."

 

 

In his biography on his own website, Dragan Stanojević states that he worked in Ukraine for several years. He became politically active in Belgrade with "We - Voice from the People."

 

 

According to data from the Serbian Business Registers Agency, since 2018, Stanojević has been a representative of the association "Movement of Patriots of the Homeland and Diaspora" as well as the All-Serbian Cossack Council.

 

Milorad Dodik on 'Voice of Europe'

As a guest on "Voice of Europe," Stanojević found himself in the company of several far-right leaders of political parties in Europe.

 

However, he is not the highest-ranking Balkan politician who appeared there. Also present was Milorad Dodik, the pro-Russian president of the Bosnian entity Republika Srpska (RS) and leader of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD).

 

His video interview was published on the now-blocked YouTube channel "Voice of Europe" on January 12 of this year.

 

 

The textual interview is dated January 9, which coincides with the Day of Republika Srpska, on the now unavailable website voiceofeurope.com. However, the interview can still be viewed via the "Web Archive" website.

 

Let's recall that Republika Srpska celebrates its holiday on January 9, the day when representatives of Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina declared the "Republic of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina," which was a crucial trigger for the escalation of interethnic conflicts.

The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has repeatedly declared the celebration of RS Day on January 9 unconstitutional, most recently in 2019.

 

Dodik, who has been sanctioned by the United States and the United Kingdom for destabilizing Bosnia and Herzegovina, baselessly accuses authorities in Sarajevo of "producing terrorists" in the interview with "Voice of Europe."

 

Moreover, among the statements quoted in the media in Bosnia and neighboring Serbia, Dodik also focuses on the issue of "friendship between Russia and Republika Srpska," which has intensified in recent years and has drawn criticism from the West.

 

 

Two and a half months later, when asked by RSE at a press conference in Banja Luka held after a meeting of the ruling coalition in RS, Dodik responded to the question of how the interview came about with "When did I give that (interview)?" and "Yes, and? What's the problem?"

 

What is known about the work of 'Voice of Europe'?

The company "Voice of Europe" was registered in Prague in 2016, and its original name was "Dada-Mapo."

 

According to data from the Czech business register, the name was changed in March 2023. The current director is a Polish citizen named Jacek January Jakubczyk, about whom little is known.

 

According to Similarweb data, the websites that "Voice of Europe" referenced in its articles are European tabloids such as the Austrian online media "Exxspress" or the conservative tabloid "Nyheteridag" from Sweden.

 

Typically, "Voice of Europe" received the most traffic through the X network (formerly Twitter). At the time of this text's publication, the channel of this media outlet on the X network was still active.

 

On this platform, the media outlet has over 180,000 followers. In fact, after the website was shut down following the intervention of Czech authorities on March 27, "Voice of Europe" intensified its posting activity on X. Within a week, from March 27 to April 3, they had over 1,350 posts and reached 1.7 million users on this network.

 

They are also active on Telegram with just over 1,500 followers.

 

Accounts on Facebook and YouTube channels were shut down immediately after the reaction from Czech institutions on March 27.

 

Czech Measures

A series of investigations in European countries were launched after the Czech government approved three additions to the sanctions list on March 28 due to the spread of Russian influence.

 

According to the official website of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the sanctions include two individuals and one company.

 

Sanctions in the Czech Republic were imposed against the aforementioned pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, whom authorities stated was behind a Russian influence operation on Czech territory. It was specified that the alleged goal of the operation was directed against Ukraine.

 

Medvedchuk allegedly orchestrated the plan through the company "Voice of Europe," which stands behind the website of the same name, with the assistance of his longtime associate Artem Marchevskyi. Both the company and Marchevskyi have been added to the sanctions list.

 

Viktor Medvedchuk and Artem Marchevskyi were at the helm of the Ukrainian pro-Russian party Opposition Platform - For Life, which was banned after the start of the Russian invasion.

 

Before fleeing Ukraine, Marchevskyi was the head of the party's youth wing and the general producer at the TV channel "112 Ukraine," which was owned by Medvedchuk.

 

Since May 2021, Medvedchuk had been under house arrest in Ukraine on charges of treason. Three days after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it was announced that he had escaped from house arrest.

In April 2022, Medvedchuk was detained and later arrested. Then, in September 2022, Medvedchuk and 55 Russians were exchanged for 215 captured Ukrainian military personnel. Since then, Medvedchuk has been living in Russia and actively continues his pro-Russian politics.

 

Among other activities, he leads the association "Another Ukraine," which openly spreads pro-Russian narratives through various channels.

 

According to the Serbian Business Registers Agency (APR), the representation of the Russian organization "Another Ukraine" was opened in Serbia in August 2023.

 

 

What is common among the interviewees of 'Voice of Europe'?

 

According to Anton Shekhovtsov, Director of the Centre for Democratic Integrity in Vienna and author of the books "Russia and the Western Far Right" and "Russian Political Warfare", this is just another informational operation of Russia.

 

"Unfortunately, in this case, the Russian state used European actors, European stakeholders. As we have seen, Russians managed to coordinate and manage this information operation through politicians from the European Union," says Shekhovtsov.

 

Shekhovtsov published a list of about a dozen European politicians whom 'Voice of Europe', as he says, promoted on YouTube since August 2023. The list includes Milorad Dodik, as well as former Prime Minister of Slovenia, conservative Janez Janša, former President of the Czech Republic Václav Klaus, and others.

 

"Most of them can be described as politicians who share some of the ideas, narratives, and messages of Kremlin propaganda. Some of these people cannot be called pro-Putinists. Some can even be called eurosceptic politicians. Some of them are far-right, but not all. What unites them is that they oppose the main liberal-democratic consensus in Europe," explains Shekhovtsov.

 

Voice of Europe referred to the action as a 'witch hunt'

Incidentally, representatives of "Voice of Europe," who do not sign their names, continued to publish news on the X social network. They referred to the actions of the Czech police and reactions in Europe as "globalist violence" and a "witch hunt" in their post on X.

 

In the same post, they called claims that the Kremlin was behind them and that they were paying European MEPs to spread pro-Russian narratives "fantasy."

 

In the meantime, politicians from several European parties, including right-wing members of Alternative for Germany (AfD), have similarly come to the defense of "Voice of Europe."

 

"If we talk about foreign funding, let's ask who initiated and financed the broad campaign of attacks and defamation against opposition politicians across Europe," questioned Petr Bystron, a member of the AfD in the Bundestag, referring to the measures taken against "Voice of Europe."

 

Czech political analyst Jindřich Rajchl, who became known to the local public as a speaker at protests against government measures during the pandemic, subsequently founding the right-leaning political party Law, Respect, Expertise (Právo Respekt Odbornost), also spoke out, stating that "Voice of Europe" is not a threat to anyone.

 

Promoting right-wing politicians, emphasizes Anton Shekhovtsov, is an expression of Russia's war against Europe.

 

"This is a war that is not being fought in conventional terms. No bullets are flying against the EU. There are no bombs. At least not yet. But Russia is waging a war by supporting those forces it believes work against the consensus in Europe," says Shekhovtsov.

 

In this segment of the conflict, exacerbated by the onset of the invasion of Ukraine, media coverage is crucial, according to this speaker.

 

"Russia believes that the rise of anti-establishment forces will somehow polarize European societies, making them more isolationist," Shekhovtsov concludes.