The intensity and danger of hybrid threats, as well as disinformation, has been increasing in recent years, while Russia and China are considered the main actors of these threats.

This was said at the "Balkan Disinfo 2025" conference organized by The Geopost, which is being held in Pristina and where experts in this field from different countries of the world are participating. 

Finnish diplomat Tapio Pysalo said that the purpose of these hybrid threats and disinformation from Russia and China is to create uncertainty and fear, as well as division within the EU and NATO.

The Finnish diplomat said that these two countries are cooperating to spread disinformation, also using artificial intelligence.

“The intensity and dangerousness of hybrid threats has been increasing in recent years, especially considering Russia and the People’s Republic of China as the main threat actors. Their objective above all is to undermine our partnerships by sowing divisions within the EU and NATO, by hindering the expansion of NATO, especially the EU in the Western Balkans, by undermining democratic institutions including the credibility of elections, by undermining public trust and polarizing our societies, by affecting the stability of our society. The goal is to sow uncertainty, fear, by undermining public trust and by weakening the support we give to Ukraine. I believe that all of this can also be applied to disinformation as general trends and in disinformation we see that both China and Russia have escalated their operations in Europe and the US. Russia has invested heavily in disinformation,” he said.

Matarina Klingova from GLOBSEC from Slovakia said that the largest amount of disinformation is being spread by political leaders themselves.

According to her, false narratives are being spread through sponsored content on social media.

"Disinformation is being spread by our political leaders, it's not something you can follow on a website or on Facebook and Twitter channels, it's now rising, it's being presented by our political leadership. You turn on the TV or any political debate before the elections and after the elections, and there you find a polarizing narrative that is presented by different stakeholders. And then you have campaigns that try to smear different government organizations, then journalists, then disinformation from our allies in the EU and NATO institutions. Then you have domestic actors who spread narratives that undermine the war in Ukraine or that affect any assistance from NATO and the EU. "From our surveys, depending on the narrative, we see that 66% of Slovaks in 2023 thought that the US was trying to withdraw from the war in Ukraine, and now most of Central Europe sees Russia as a threat, but that perception in Slovakia has dropped to 62% in 2022, to 49% in 2024," he stressed.

Head of the Western Balkans Task Force within the Strategic Division of the European External Action Service in Brussels, Alen Musaefendic, stated that as a division in the Western Balkans, they have been working against disinformation since 2018.

He emphasizes that the leaders of the Western Balkans have pledged to work on combating FIMI, while adding that combating disinformation has become part of the process of joining the EU.

 "This is unfortunate because on a number of occasions all the political leaders of the Balkans have pledged to work harder to combat FIMI and disinformation, for example in 2002 at the Western Balkans Summit in Tirana in the conclusions point 25 is that 'we pledge to fight FIMI [Disinformation, manipulation, interference in information by foreign actors] and this also applies to the leaders of the EU and the Western Balkans. From 2023 it is also part of the EU's addressing process to adopt FIMI, it is an innovation that as part of the EU accession process the candidate countries which are the majority of the countries in the Western Balkans are obliged to do more to narrow the space for the spread of FIMI. We proactively position ourselves as EU and pro-EU so that threat actors cannot sow false narratives", he stressed.

Consultant specializing in new challenges to election integrity, Ben Graham, emphasized that in the United Kingdom, where he comes from, there is a strengthening of pro-Russian narratives from networks of the People's Republic of China.

But, he added that the numerous electoral processes that marked the past year have created some positive aspects for combating disinformation more effectively.

"We see a greater strategic alignment with our adversaries, we see an increase or strengthening of pro-Russian narratives from the networks of the People's Republic of China, and it is important that we work together to counter them. Secondly, we think that we have not yet caught up. It seems that we are stuck in a fortress that is in a state of siege and we tend to raise our shields but not maybe it helps us there and then, but it does not help us to win on the territory in terms of fighting information manipulation. We also need to look at the psychological aspects of why people believe this disinformation and how they can convince people. I think we need to work more eloquently in countering it," he stressed.

Researcher and digital intelligence expert, especially on manipulation campaigns and foreign information influence, Benjamin Schultz from the United States, stated that due to executive orders received from the new American presidency, an attack on researchers is taking place.

According to him, the US has become a hyper-polarized society.

Video "In the next two weeks, a lot has changed in the US and the whole world due to various executive orders and in the US a problematic trend that is circulating is the attack on researchers and researchers' websites. The US is now trying to bend the approach to Europe, but once again it seems to be problematic in terms of international cooperation and in the face of these hybrid threats on the one hand from Iran, Russia, China and others. I'm trying not to sound like a politician, but disinformation is a dirty political word, because scientific grants have now been withdrawn that have nothing to do with the party, they have been basic works in terms of social impact and which is public health, AI everything that almost barely mentions the word disinformation, women, or bias. And the grants have now been withdrawn only on the basis of these, now we are in a place where cooperation is being attacked in an institutionalist way and all aspects of scientific research and is being made like a black sheep", Schultz said.

/Kosovapress/