THE NAME AGREEMENT STRONGLY INVOLVED THE RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA

On June 17, 2018, the Government signed the Prespa Agreement and thus resolved the two-decade name dispute with Greece. Later, on January 11, 2019, the Parliament passed the change of the Constitution, formalizing also the change of the country’s name into Republic of North Macedonia, paving the way for the country towards NATO and the EU. In this timeframe, the efforts of  the Russian propaganda, which aimed to prevent the name Agreement, were particularly heated. Russia has repeatedly tried to undermine it. The country’s road to NАТО with this Agreement became another unsuccessful attempt by Russia in her efforts to influence in Eastern and Central Europe, but also the Balkans as a special focus.

06.02.2019 was the next historic day when member states signed the  protocol for joining the NATO Alliance . A day later, on 07.02.2019, Maria Zaharova, a spokeswoman of the Russian Government, made a warning through the press that Skopje would have to pay by losing the opportunity to conduct its own authentic foreign policy as a NATO member.

Officially, Russia recognized the country under the new name Republic of North Macedonia. Joining NATO will not bring any good for neither North Macedonia, nor Europe, were the messages sent by the officials of the Russian Government.

The Greek government expelled two Russian diplomats for interfering in the internal affairs, Katimerini published. The Russian MFA in its defense of this event, pointed out that behind this decision of the Government of Greece is the West, which was also published on certain media in the country.

The US Secretary of Defense, Jim Mathis, during his visit in Skopje expressed strong concern that groups financed by Russia are continually trying to undermine the Agreement.

According to the investigative reports of journalists in 2017, Macedonia was subject to a serial subversive   propaganda and intelligence activity, realized through the Embassy of the Russian Federation. Russian subversive policy conducted through diplomatic channels, uses a soft force. Intelligence reports state that Russia’s main goal is the isolation of North Macedonia, in order to create the possibility for implementing a strategy for creating a neutral zone in the Balkans. For this purpose, Putin’s party has initiated a regional platform.

The Macedonian Prime Minister found that Russian businessmen were paying people from the country to protest and cause violence, especially before the Referendum for the name, held on 30.09.2018 . According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Report, one of the richest businessman in Russia, Ivan Savidis paid at least 300,000 euros to Macedonian participants in the fight against NATO and against the name change. This money was paid to Macedonian politicians, extreme nationalist organizations and football hooligans.

A few weeks before the vote, social media platforms became the main channels for political statements, but also a real arena where false content was deliberately polarized. The Russian disinformative agenda focused on encouraging a strong patriotic mood among Macedonians who do not want the country to join NATO and the EU, for the price of changing its name.

One of the theses that were placed was the one that claimed that Macedonia is being blackmailed by the West, with the name Agreement as a guarantee for joining NATO. On the Twitter platform with the hashtag Boycott, the boycott against for voting in the Referendum was encouraged. This group generated more than 24. 000 posts, and 20,000 were retweeted. Facebook used a similar recipe. A few weeks before the Referendum, about 40 new profiles appeared with a boycott message. Hundreds of new online media were part of this strategy. They used disinformation as their main weapon. One of the disinformation narratives was shared by Express, and claimed that Google eliminated us from the list of the languages it recognizes.

“Boycott of the Referendum”, “Do not Destroy Macedonia”, “Zaev – a Traitor” were part of the messages that were almost simultaneously shared on online networks or online media. In the structure of the boycott campaign, all the tools were used: political bots, organized trolls, disinformation, hate speech. Among the political actors, the loudest one was “United Macedonia”, who was the main supporter. The visits of the Western leaders were a signal for an alarm for a speculative battle. It is interesting to emphasize that this battle was not conducted only in the country. A series of articles appeared in Russia, whose purpose was well known. A whole series of speculative articles appeared on the web portal web-tribune.com. The portal has no impeachment and editor-in-chief, and is used to feed other pro-Russian portals in order to allow rapid spread of the Russian propaganda. The focus of their texts was the Russian military power, the role of Russia as an ally and so on.

It is interesting to mention that many of these articles were taken and processed by the newspaper Vecher, while it was being edited by Ivona Talevska. These texts are now deleted from the archive.

The last attempt to spread this narrative is found in the statement given by the ambassador of Russia in Serbia, something for which the F2N2 team has written before.

A country is presented by the Russian media as cannon fodder or as an object of many blackmails. They hoped that a failed Referendum or a bad vote in the Parliament would be a good basis for early pre-elections, where Zaev’s Government would lose.

Russian propaganda also targeted the Albanian population, and also included The Tirana Platform in the game.

The Agreement for the name change is successful. The country will become a 30th member state of NATO. But the Russian propaganda is still active.