In just over a year and a half of operation, the Eagle Eye Explore portal has published hundreds of articles spreading disinformation, anti-liberal and pro-Russian narratives and promoting the extreme right, most often the party "Alternative for Germany" (AfD), which in Germany is called the party "led by the Kremlin", writes BIRN.
Although the Law on Public Information of Serbia stipulates that information about the publisher and editors of the media must be published in the imprint, there is no such information on this portal.
The lack of information about the publisher, i.e. ownership and editors, is one of the characteristics of the media it markets Moscow throughout Europe.
Ruslan Trad, an associate of DFRLab, which deals with disinformation, says that this portal has all the characteristics of the Kremlin's propaganda channels, from hidden ownership, through cooperation with Russian media journalists and the AfD, to sharing texts through the Telegram channel and other portals connected to Moscow.
"The pattern you identified is a distinctive signature of Kremlin-backed media ecosystems that has been extensively documented," says Tarde.
The European Commission warned about Moscow's influence on the media in the Balkans as early as 2023. At that time, Brussels assessed that the Kremlin's narrative in Serbia is particularly effective compared to other countries in the region.
In the study "Russia paves the way for autocracies", published by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in 2025, researchers found that Serbia serves as a central hub for the spread of Russian influence throughout the region, through state media outlets such as Sputnik and RT Balkan.
The ultimate goal of these operations is to undermine citizens' trust in democratic institutions, cause social divisions and slow down the region's Euro-Atlantic integration.
Eagle Eye Explore and Legal Provisions
The Eagle Eye Explore portal has no imprint and is not registered in the media register in Serbia, so it is not known who the publisher and owner are, nor where the funds for its work come from.
Nataša Jovanović, a long-time journalist for the Pechat, Večernje Novosti, Sputnik and Russia Danas portals, spoke on several occasions for the Bulgarian media Efir.info as the editor-in-chief of Eagle Eye Explora.
To the questions sent by BIRN by e-mail, about who is the publisher, editor, how the portal is financed and whether it cooperates with Russian media organizations and programs, she answered that "the questions are so uniform that they do not require additional explanations."
"I was expecting journalistic questions, and I received those that can only be asked by the security authorities, and the prosecutor, but also those within the framework of the valid media legislation of Serbia. We will be in touch, and I am sure, and we will have the opportunity to get to know each other better," Jovanović wrote.
However, the Law on Public Information of Serbia imposes an obligation on the media to publish an imprint, which must contain information about the publisher, editor-in-chief and other editors.
"The imprint is a key instrument of media transparency and responsibility for a number of reasons. It allows the audience to assess the credibility and possible interests, most often political or economic, behind the content," Anna Martinoli, media theorist, producer and professor at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts, explains to BIRN.
Fines for media publishers without an imprint, or a properly published imprint, range from 100.000 to 1.000.000 dinars.
What is known about the Eagle Eye Explore portal?
The Eagle Eye Explore portal domain was registered on May 28, 2024 with the Canadian registrar Tucows, through the company Adriahost from Serbia, which sells domain registration services and offers web hosting and other IT services. The site is hosted on the servers of LeaseWeb from the Netherlands, which provides its web hosting.
Tucows is an authorized registrar and provides an additional service to protect the identity of the registrant through its company Contact Privacy, so that all data about the domain owner - name, address and email - are intentionally replaced with generic data in order to hide the real identity of the registrant.
This practice is legal and is often used in cases where domain owners wish to remain anonymous.
This company told BIRN that they can only disclose information about who registered the domain based on an official order from the competent institutions of Canada, Denmark, Germany or the United States.
Who does Eagle Eye Explore work with?
Vesna Veizović, editor of the Vaseljenska portal and author of Eagle Eye Explora, and Dragan Petrović, also one of the authors and scientific advisor at the Institute for International Politics and Economy, had a significant role in the initial promotion of the portal, as shown by the Rolliapp platform that uses artificial intelligence to analyze the spread of narratives.
Shortly after the establishment of the portal, Veizović announced on her Telegram channel that "they started on their own and again and that she believes that they will succeed as such", as well as that she will investigate NGOs and the entire civil sector, which she calls "an outpost of foreign agencies in Serbia".
In the meantime, about 40 authors have written for Eagle Eye Explore, and among the most active are Veizović, Dževad Galijašević, Branko Žujović and Zoran Čvorović. The texts are published in Serbian and English.
The site was built on the WordPress platform, and the accounts that have the ability to manage include the names of two politicians from the German AfD. Namely, under number 29, an order was opened in the name of Artur Abramović, and under number 33 in the name of Anton Friesen.
Both German politicians told BIRN that they never had editorial access to the site. One of their texts was published on the Eagle Eye Explore portal.
Abramović tells BIRN that he actually wrote the text for the German newspaper Junge Freiheit, and that it was translated into Serbian by an acquaintance of his, and that he never even had editorial access to the site.
"I don't speak your language fluently - why would anyone give me such access? But most importantly, I do not and have never cooperated with Russian state organizations, officials, or the media. I cooperate exclusively with the Russian opposition; and if you want your readers to know who I am and what I do, you should inform them that I have been criticizing the Russian government for years," wrote Abramovich.
He added that he received "no royalties from Eagle Eye Explore" and "doesn't even know who runs it."
Anton Friesen, on the other hand, in response to BIRN's questions, wrote that "he does not work with Russian actors, that he does not plan to publish any more articles in the Serbian media and that he does not have administrative access to the Eagle Eye Explore portal." When asked who first contacted him about the site, Friesen replied, "No one."
AfD affiliation
AfD is the second largest party in Germany and the largest opposition party in the country. In May of last year, the Federal Office for the Protection of Constitutional Order, Germany's intelligence service, classified the party as a "confirmed right-wing extremist organization."
A court in Cologne recently issued a temporary measure stating that until the end of the court proceedings – initiated by the AfD – the term cannot be used to describe the party.
Photo: Soeren Stache/DPA via APAlice Weidel, co-president of the AfD
Political opponents regularly accuse the AfD of working in the interests of the Kremlin and of being a "sleeper cell loyal to Russia", which the AfD denies. Some MPs described the AfD as a party "led by the Kremlin" and a "puppet of Russian interests".
In addition to author's texts, the portal often publishes interviews with extreme right-wingers. As much as a quarter of the published interviews are with AfD politicians, including Bjorn Hoke. Hoke is the leader of the local AfD in one of the German federal states, for whom the court decision stated that it was not defamation to be called a "fascist".
Right-wingers from Hungary, France, Italy, Romania, Georgia, Moldova and other countries were also interviewed.
Russian Media School
In addition to the Eagle Eye Explore portal, Nataša Jovanović, Zoran Čvorović and Nemanja Stojanović, who is the administrator of the Facebook page of this portal, also connects participation in the media school organized in Russia and Serbia in 2024 with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.
The organizers of the school were the Russian non-governmental organization ANO "Producer Center Krasnaya Lodka" and the publishing house "Bitije".
The participants first stayed in Russia in July of that year, and then in Serbia in November. While Stojanović was one of the students of the school, Čvorović was one of the lecturers.
Stojanović is a historian and author on the portal, and he writes geopolitical analyzes about the USA, Great Britain and Eastern Europe.
How is Eagle Eye Explore content distributed?
Eagle Eye Explore promotes its texts on social networks where it has a total of about 18 thousand followers.
In addition to profiles on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and Twitter, the portal also has a channel on the Telegram network, where it has 1.634 members.
Links from the channel are most often carried by the channels Srpski ugao, Milan&Zurka | Guide, Bunt je stanje duha, as well as the well-known pro-Russian channels Vaseljenska, Balkanar, Serbskiy Vestnik, Vostok Vesti, Dejan Berić, DD Geopolitics and Balkan gossip.
Among the broadcasters is one of the most influential Russian military channels, Rybar.
Photo: AP Photo/Pavel BednyakovKremlin / Illustration
In addition to Telegram distribution, the content of Eagle Eye Explore is also spread by numerous media, among them the pro-regime tabloids Informer and Alo, as well as Novi Standard, Vaseljenska, Novi Vesnik, Odbrana i bezvetnost, Movement for the Defense of Kosovo and Metohija, Poredak and Srpski Ugao.
Content from this site is also transmitted in the region. In the Republic of Srpska, Eagle Eye Explore texts are published on the RTRS public service portal, as well as the online edition of the most widely read daily newspaper Glas srpska.
In Montenegro, the content is transmitted by the IN4S portal. In November 2019, the US embassy in Podgorica accused the portal of being directly influenced by the Kremlin.
The content of this portal also appears in the Russian media, such as the state daily Ruske novine [Rossijskaa gazeta], Geopolitika.RU, as well as the Bulgarian site Efir.info, for which Nataša Jovanović also spoke.
Efir.info was identified by DFRLab researchers as part of a network of Bulgarian propaganda channels linked to the Kremlin.
A network of websites called Pravda, launched as part of what Radio Free Europe reported as part of one of Russia's major disinformation operations that transmit content sourced from the Kremlin, is also promoting Eagle Eye Explore, inviting its readers to follow the portal on social media.
Part of hybrid warfare
Ruslan Trad states that the Eagle Eye Explora portal has a number of features that Russian propaganda researchers have seen many times.
He explains that "Kremlin-backed propaganda sites operate through several distinguishing features": they publish content through locally initiated media outlets that are then disseminated across multiple media and social networks and in multiple languages, to create the illusion of "independent local journalism while actually pushing centrally coordinated messages."
"The interview of the editor-in-chief of Eagle Eye Explora for the Bulgarian media Efir, part of the pro-Russian ecosystem, is an example of a sophisticated strategy of cross-legitimization within regional propaganda networks. Such cross-border cooperation exists because of mutual legitimation, where media from different countries mutually interview their representatives and thus give them credibility," says Trad.
The hiring of journalists who write for Russian media outlets such as Sputnik and RT is also a pattern seen before and "represents a distinctive feature of Kremlin-linked media ecosystems."
"The dual roles between Russian state media (RT and Sputnik) and supposedly independent local portals play a key strategic role. They enable direct editorial direction and coordination of narratives from Russian state media to local platforms while maintaining a convincing denial of formal interconnections," describes Trad.
He explains that the sharing of content through Telegram channels such as DD Geopolitics and Rybar indicates that the portal is part of a "broader infrastructure of Russian influence."
Their goal, he states, is "undermining Western cohesion and integration in NATO/EU, promoting Euroscepticism, destabilizing pro-Western governments and creating political bases favorable to Russia."
Media in the Kremlin network conduct coordinated destabilization campaigns in certain countries, distort facts and influence election campaigns.
"In the target states, the goal is also to shape future political elites that will normalize pro-Russian narratives and promote Moscow's strategic interests," concludes Trad.
Source: BIRN
