Academically, it is called "hybrid war", journalists write about "shadow war". Germany and other European countries are clearly targeted by Russia - through hacker attacks, sabotage, drone espionage. And more than once the trail to the Russian services led through - Serbia.
"According to the knowledge of Western intelligence services, that Balkan country is a focal point for Russian sabotage operations in Europe. The Russian secret services allegedly recruit and train personnel there," the weekly writes now. SPIEGEL.
A new argument has arrived these days, and in the most sensitive case of this undeclared war, the one that took place at the airport in Leipzig at the beginning of August. There, a drone equipped with a router, which was controlled from who knows where, was supposed to crash into the tank of the Ukrainian military transport plane "Antonov" that was traveling there. Allegedly, the plastic explosive did not explode only because of a poorly connected igniter. According to information, one of the suspects later went to Serbia. Danilo B. and Slobodan Đ, who were arrested in June of this year at the border crossing to Hungary, are already in custody in Serbia. Components for the drone and explosives were transported in separate cars. Although nothing was heard from Belgrade, German officials publicly said that this prevented a new attack in Germany.
ARRESTS WHEN THERE IS NO WHERE TO GO
Now German investigators believe that B. and Đ. they also know something about the suspects in the Leipzig case. Because, as it is believed, all of them are part of the network of Russian "disposable agents", trained small-time criminals or idlers who perform diversions for small money - from writing graffiti to setting fires in substations - and often they can only guess who hires them. If they fall into the hands of the police, the ties to Moscow are difficult to prove.
The matrix repeats itself - the government of Aleksandar Vučić is conspicuously silent about the actions of Moscow, whose services came to the rescue when the student and popular uprising should have been declared a "color revolution". The FSB came to Serbia to, with the help of prohibited experiments on dogs, ostensibly prove that a sound cannon was not used against the demonstrators last March.
The domestic services, on the other hand, do nothing to break the Russian agencies - until someone from the West gives them a concrete tip and until a political order arrives. Then, as a rule, arrests follow.
"It's repairing the damage," says Predrag Petrović, director of research at the Belgrade Center for Security Policy. "If there was a serious effort by our services to cut off or at least reduce the influence of the Russian service, then we would look at preventive actions, which are the essence of the intelligence services. Before the damage happens, even outside of Serbia, because then it is damage to the image of the state and national interests."
B. and Đ. are suspected in Serbia only of illegal possession of weapons and falsification of documents - there is no mention of a more serious crime, such as terrorism. Admittedly, the Higher Public Prosecutor's Office in Subotica has confirmed that it has expanded the investigation to four more people, due to the "Kanjiža" case. This refers to the discovery of two backpacks with explosives near the gas infrastructure just before the elections in Hungary in April. Then, then defeated, Prime Minister Viktor Orban directly suspected Kiev. However, there are claims that it is a Moscow operation.
PIGS' HEADS AND PIG FEATHER
There was also more damage. Last September, two people were first arrested in Serbia on suspicion of training about 150 Moldovan and Romanian citizens in a camp near Loznica to cause chaos after the elections in Moldova. Seventy people were arrested in that country on the eve of the elections.
A few days later, eleven more people were arrested in Serbia. They are suspected of espionage and religious and national discrimination, because last year they threw green paint on Jewish buildings in Paris and left pig heads in front of mosques in an attempt to cause chaos. In addition, they wrote discriminatory messages in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
A Serbian citizen was in the team that poured pur-pen into the exhausts of around 270 cars in Germany, destroying the engines in that way. They left stickers, the purpose of which was to present all this as an action of radical green-left activists, and presumably thus help the right-wing Alternative for Germany.
"In Serbia, it is cheap and easy to recruit poor people," says Petrović for "Vreme". However, he is convinced that all actions have at least the tacit consent of the authorities of Aleksandar Vučić.
VULIN AND FRIENDS
Petrović recalls that the former director of Bija Aleksandar Vulin, as well as the recent deputy head of Bija Marko Parezanović, received decorations from Vladimir Putin.
Vulin, in addition, snitched to the Russians that the opposition from Russia was meeting in Belgrade, after which some of those people ended up in Russian prisons. Investigative journalists found among the increasing number of Russians who receive Serbian papers, more are on EU blacklists.
"And at the political level, Serbia does not comply with the European Union's resolutions towards Russia. Well, for a whole decade we have a pro-Russian campaign, not from the Russian media themselves - but from local ones, which are close to the authorities," Petrović enumerates.
There are observers who think that Vučić has largely severed ties with Russia by arming Ukraine with American money. Petrović is not one of those.
"It suits the Kremlin that Serbia is further away from EU membership. The situation is reminiscent of Belarus, as Tomislav Nikolić once said - Serbia is a hole in the European carpet. Russia's important interest is for Serbia to be a springboard for destabilization," he says.
New information from Germany, according to which the trail of the "shadow war" leads back to Serbia, did not cause any comments in Belgrade. Moreover, the news was hardly even mentioned in the chaos of daily events. In the vocabulary of Soviet strategists, general Maskirovka.
