After the top of the Russian government (Ministry of Defense) spread the false news about 74 Croats killed in the ranks of the Ukrainian army, alarms were triggered again last weekend due to reports of planted bombs in two Zagreb shopping centers (Arena and Avenue Mall). The reports were false. The sender is unknown, just like the sender of similar reports a week earlier, when it was revealed that the reports came from some Russian internet domain. It is presumed that they are (also) part of the Russian information war, from which Croatia is not exempt.
In the first wave of disinformation, at the beginning of Putin’s invasion, you could hear geopolitical ‘independent experts’ in the Croatian media mainstream explaining why Ukraine has no chance against Russia or equally ‘independent’ commentators calling for Putin to get rid of that problematic Zelensky as soon as possible so that negotiations can begin. Today, Croatia is being targeted with fake news from the top of the Russian government, and unknown senders threaten terrorist acts. Tomorrow, in accordance with the war dramaturgy, some of these threats will materialize, possibly as so-called false flag operations (false flag operation). They should not be invoked, but the danger is real. Given the dependence of the Croatian budget on the tourist season and the destabilizing processes in BiH, the Croatian coast is potentially the most vulnerable area.
The British have turned the tide
After NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that the war in Ukraine is likely to be prolonged and that NATO’s assistance to Ukraine will remain permanent, the new Chief of the General Staff of the British Army has gone the furthest in psychologically preparing Europe for war. General Patrick Sanders recently warned that due to the Russian invasion, the British Army ‘must be ready to fight and win in land wars’. We know that NATO, which has positioned itself as the main defender of the West and its values after the Russian invasion, is also conducting its information war. It is not only Russia or Ukraine that is waging it.
We also know that the United Kingdom is once again seizing the opportunity in this Russian-Ukrainian war to profile itself as a serious global power, striking above its weight class, just as it did during the wars following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. At that time, it very unprincipledly, but also very systematically and persistently, politically supported Serbian imperial policy in the Balkans. Today, it has turned the tide and become the bearer of resistance to Russian imperial policy, not only in Ukraine but also more broadly in Europe. In this context, this dramatic warning from General Sanders should be viewed in part as part of the British information war, as a British response to Putin’s efforts to divide, fracture, and thus weaken the West on the issue of the war in Ukraine, to accelerate Western fatigue over Ukraine, which is a necessary consequence of a prolonged war. However, the line between information warfare and what we recognize as conventional real war is very fluid. In this sense, Sanders’ statements are a mental preparation not only for the United Kingdom but for all of Europe for a state of war, which may not escalate into a large land war outside Ukraine, but will certainly last.
