The Anonymous hacker collective has accused Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic of acting as “Putin’s puppet” as Serbia sparks a conflict with Kosovo in an act Russia hopes will distract the West from Ukraine.
“Russia is trying to open a new front in Europe to distract the West,” Ivana Stradner, an adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Barish Center for Media Integrity, told Fox News Digital.
“Russia does not want to send troops, tanks or planes to the Balkans, where Kosovo and Serbia meet,” Stradner said. “What Russia wants to do [is] create chaos within the region, so the United States and our allies, so we don’t pay much attention to Ukraine and Russia, you know, to get distracted by what’s going on in Kosovo.”
Kosovo last week closed its border with Serbia as the two nations face rising tensions. Ethnic Serbs had erected border barricades to protest the arrest of a former police officer suspected of involvement in attacks on ethnic Albanian police officers, France 24 reported.
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“Such an illegal blockade has prevented the free movement and movement of people and goods, which is why we invite our citizens and compatriots to use other border points for movement,” the Kosovo police said in a statement.
Several shootings followed, with attacks on the Kosovar police and international peacekeeping forces. The Serbian armed forces went on high alert, but Vucic appeared to ease tensions after reaching an agreement on December 29 that would lift the blockade, the BBC reported.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic
(Milos Miskov/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images/File)
Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, the Russian ambassador to Serbia, said that Serbia can trust Russia regarding the situation in Kosovo, “regardless of serious challenges… in the context of the confrontation with NATO,” according to the news agency. Russian TASS.
“We continue to participate in resolving current international crises, including in Kosovo,” Botsan-Kharchenko said. “We will continue in close coordination with Belgrade in defending Serbia’s legal rights regarding Kosovo and Metohija.”
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Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, but Serbia has never recognized it and has actively encouraged the country’s ethnic Serb population to challenge Kosovar authority.
This potentially chaotic situation presented an excellent opportunity for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who treats Serbia as a “very close ally”, according to Stradner.
Kosovo media are seen as Kosovo Serbs begin to remove barricades in Mitrovica, Kosovo on December 29, 2022.
(Vudi Xhymshiti/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
“[Serbia] it does not border Russia, but in every possible way they are supporting Russia when it comes to the war in Ukraine,” he said, adding that the Russian ambassador “received further instructions from Moscow on how to proceed” on the issue.
Despite the removal of the blockade, Anonymous called Vucic and accused him of causing the blockade at Putin’s request, eventually declaring war on Vucic.
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In the first week of the invasion of Ukraine, Russia attacked Ukrainian government websites. The use of cyber attacks led Anonymous to declare war on Russia and begin targeting Russian websites and begin a series of “hack and dump” attacks.
The sheer impact of the attacks has resulted in a large volume of information being released to the public, including the disclosure of the personal details of 120,000 Russian soldiers, access to the Kremlin’s CCTV system, and also gas pipelines leading out of Russia, according to the AnonymousTV Twitter account. (It should be noted that Anonymous, by nature, does not have a single “official” account.)
NATO-led Kosovo Force soldiers patrol near a roadblock in the city of Mitrovica, Kosovo, on December 29, 2022.
(Predrag Milosavljevic/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Recent attacks have hit more selective targets, including SIBUR, Russia’s largest petrochemical company, and a claim that Vucic is “Mr. Putin’s puppet.”
“It has come to our attention that the tensions and military provocations in northern Kosovo by Serb criminal elements are trying to provoke an armed conflict,” the group said in a statement. a video posted on Twitter. “Autocratic Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, a puppet of Vladimir Putin, is trying to destabilize the region using the mechanisms of violence and terror of war criminal Slobodan Milosevic, but it is known that this effort will be suicidal for him.”
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The threat made no impression on Vucic, who responded by posting a photo of himself playing with his dogs on Instagram with the caption: “We’re getting ready for the fight against Anonymous.”
The group responded, saying: “#Anonymous is not a small group of people powerless to ignore, we are an organized, globally active collective of like-minded people and our message will be clear, if you don’t stop your dangerous actions in #Kosovo read a Twitter post from AnonymousTV.
Dustin Carmack, a researcher on cybersecurity, intelligence and emerging technologies at the Heritage Foundation, cautioned that while such disclosures may be well-intentioned, it’s hard to predict the fallout.
“You’ve seen that throughout different intelligence disclosures over the last decade and the impacts they can have in Europe and other places,” Carmack told Fox News Digital.
“I think it’s very difficult in the environment that we find ourselves in for anyone to judge, especially a group of hacktivists who may have a thin picture of something that they think is revealing on one end, even if it is… knowing that can affect second.” hand or third hand,” Carmack continued. “I think [in] In this context, you don’t know the nature of Anonymous and who is making that decision.”
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“You don’t know what the ultimate link is for that person making that decision, and that makes it very difficult for the British, the Americans or anyone,” he added.
Fox News Digital sent requests for comment to the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the US Department of State.
