How Kremlin Propaganda Is Spreading Through Serbia

RFE
30 Aug 2026, 16:25 GMT+10

BELGRADE -- Thousands of people on Facebook and Instagram follow the page Govorit Moskva, whose content consists almost exclusively of speeches by Vladimir Putin translated into Serbian.

The page publishes the Russian presidents speeches on a daily basis, in which he justifies the invasion of Ukraine, praises the Russian military, and says that people in the West are being led toward a "spiritual catastrophe."

Serbia has become an oasis for Russian propaganda. Pro-Russian narratives are spread not only through official Russian media but also through a complex web of aggregator websites, which often serve the interests of the Serbian authorities.

The Aggregators

Russian state-funded RT and Sputnik have been sanctioned by the EU since Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The EU also suspended the broadcasting of Sputnik and RT in the bloc "until the aggression against Ukraine is brought to an end and until the Russian Federation and its associated media outlets cease conducting disinformation and information manipulation against the EU and its member states."

But in November 2022, Russian state media found a port in a storm, when RT Balkan began publishing online content in Serbian. That prompted warnings from the EU, with former European Parliament rapporteur for Serbia Vladimir Bilcik writing on X that the launch of RT Balkan in Serbia was contrary to European foreign policy.

In addition to the presence of established Russian state-funded media, there are scores of murky websites and social media channels -- many of them aggregating content from multiple places -- that push pro-Kremlin narratives in Serbia.

One of those is the Govorit Moskva channel, which is followed by more than 20,000 people on Facebook and around 14,000 on Instagram. Identifying who is behind the channel, however, is not easy. It was created in 2025 and, according to information on the Facebook page, its administrator is based in Serbia and it is run by a nongovernmental organization. There is no such organization, however, listed under the name of Govorit Moskva in Serbia's publicly available Business Registers Agency.

Govorit Moskva is also the name of a pro-Kremlin Moscow-based radio station. The station's editor in chief, Roman Babayan, has held several positions in Russian state institutions and is known for supporting the Kremlin. Babayan has been under European Union sanctions since 2022 for spreading anti-Ukrainian propaganda and supporting pro-Russian separatists in Ukraines Donbas region.

Neither the Moscow radio station nor the page of the same name, Govorit Moskva, responded to RFE/RLs inquiry about whether there are any links between the two.

In 2025, Thomas Brey, a lecturer and former head of the Southeastern Europe bureau of the German Press Agency (dpa),examined Serbias role in spreading Russian propaganda narratives in the Balkans.

In a written response to RFE/RL, Brey said that "all the major Serbian newspapers and TV channels, through their digital portals, also serve as a hub for the dissemination of this Serbian-Russian propaganda."

A similar assessment was made by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders in a2025 report,stating that Russian propaganda is "thriving" in Serbia through Russian state television.

Cloning The Message

Another website that scrapes and recycles content from pro-Kremlin outlets is Pravda Serbia. With no original content, the site mainly republishes news from Sputnik and RT in several languages. On the page, there is no information about ownership or editorial management.

In a2024 report,the French General Secretariat for Defense and National Security identified Pravda Serbia as part of a network involved in a "large-scale Russian disinformation campaign in Europe."

"The main objective of this content appears to be reporting on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict through a positive portrayal of the special military operation and by disparaging Ukraine and its leadership, the report states, adding that the websites began publishing in different languages in 2023. " Special military operation is the Kremlins official term for its war on Ukraine.

RFE/RL contacted Pravda Serbia but received no response regarding the ownership and editorial management of the website, and how it responds to the allegations in the French report.

In 2024, RFE/RL journalists investigated the Pravda website, finding that content on the site was published automatically. Their analysis showed that an article posted on RTs Serbian-language website appeared, fully replicated, on Pravda just two minutes later.

Who Benefits From Russian Propaganda?

According to Brey, pro-Russian media outlets, journalists, aggregators, and social media pages contribute to creating an "unrealistic view of international politics" that benefits the authorities in Serbia.

"They present the following picture of the world: the Western-dominated world is disintegrating and being replaced by a multipolar one led by Russia and China, Brey told RFE/RL.

This portrayal also promotes the idea of "the superiority of Russias ideal-typical political and social system over that of the West, with Putin as the father of the nation at its helm, he added.

These narratives, Brey said, depict Russia and Serbia as eternal victims treated unfairly by the rest of the world. And they spread unhindered in Serbia, Brey added, because they suit the country's president.

"[Aleksandar] Vucic is keeping his propaganda machine running so that the West can see what anti-Western sentiment he can stir up in his country at the flick of a switch," he said.

The Serbian president was included on the 2025 Predators of Press Freedom list compiled by Reporters Without Borders.

The list included 34 leaders or entities that, according to the organization, are united by "hatred of press freedom," as well as the "silencing of independent media voices" and the "trampling of the right to information."

In its 2025 enlargement report on Serbia, the European Commission assessed that the environment for the media and for their free, independent, and professional work remains "restricted."

How Kremlin Propaganda Is Spreading Through Serbia