RUSSIANS USED TO BEING BLAMED FOR EVERYTHING – Russian Culture Centre Director for Kurir: They thought Russia would sink but...

"I thought that my reporting and the reporting of my colleagues from Yugoslavia during the 1990s would help the people of Russia and Ukraine understand that the West was preparing the same fate for them as well, that they would follow the same plan there, but we failed. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a great tragedy. I hope the war will end soon, but the consequences will be felt for years to come," Evgeny Baranov, Director of the Russian Science and Culture Centre in Belgrade, said in his interview with Kurir.

Russia is the bad guy in the world today. Most countries are on one side, and Russia is on the other, almost alone, isolated, and under sanctions. There is no end in sight of the war with Ukraine, with both sides suffering losses but neither caving in. How do you comment on all this?

"Russia has seen this before. Russians are used to having blame pinned on them by the whole world. Every 50 years we get blamed for everything. We are sorry that we are no longer able to help our friends in some international organizations and institutions, and the rest is just nonsense. We're a huge country, and all this hasn't hit us the way it's being presented. They thought Russia would sink as soon as the cables connecting it to Europe were cut off, but this is far from certain."

How has it actually come to pass that the relationship between the Russians and the Ukrainians is what it is today?

"Well, just take a look at the former Yugoslavia, look at your brothers in Montenegro. Could anyone have imagined 15 years ago that Montenegro would be divided into two nations – the Montenegrin Serbs and the Montenegrins? The same plan and the same signature pattern have been applied in our case as well. Everything's been done according to the 'divide and conquer' principle. For me, what's going on in Ukraine is a great tragedy, because Russians are forced to go to war against Russians. And that is terrible. I feel sorry for the unfortunate Ukrainians, who are actually Russian."

Russian?

"Yes, I submit to you that they are Russian. I've been to Kyiv, and it is a Russian city, where the Russian language was and still is spoken. However, in the past ten years, they have been turning the population into a thing of its own, into something allegedly progressive, so now they have to provide some kind of basis for it too."

So, you don't think that Russia attacking Ukraine is a mistake?

"Russia's special military operation in Ukraine is no mistake. Russia was forced to do it. For years we waited, suffered, and tried to reach an agreement, to explain and to remind them. But it was all to no avail. Even after shooting at civilians started, we continued to wait, for eight more years. And the waiting has cost us 14,000 lives. Now we don't feel like winners because, I repeat, all this is a great tragedy. I hope the war ends soon. That said, I know that the consequences will be felt for many years to come once the war is over."

As someone who has worked as a journalist for years, what is your take on the banning of the Russian media in Europe?

"We were ready for that. Incidentally, I think that Russia cannot win the media war that is being waged against it. We don't stand a chance and have no capacity… I wouldn't want to be a reporter at times like these. I don't regret not working as a reporter now, but I'm positive that even now I'd be on the ground."

You have been to Kosovo several tens of times and first arrived there in 1998. What did you see then?

"I got into journalism in the early 1990s, when all of us were influenced by the Western view of this profession, which was perfectly alright until we found ourselves in the situation that the world is in now – there is no objectivity at all. Back then, in Kosovo, I could see that this journalistic objectivity wasn't there – my colleagues from the West worked on stories from one side only. What sort of objectivity is that? What was happening to the Kosovo Serbs in the late 1990s didn't catch the public eye in the West. My Western colleagues only talked about the suffering of the Albanian people, which did happen, because when there is a civilian conflict, the civilian population are the first victims, on both sides. But you have to talk about both, you cannot simply proclaim Albanians are the victims and Serbs are the executioners. And that's precisely what happened in Kosovo then. At any rate, the entire Western propaganda always works in this way – finding a single culprit and accusing them of everything that is going on in the region and beyond."

What impression did you get of the Kosovo Serbs then?

"During my first visit to Kosovo, I met a great Serbian lady who I have come to see as a symbol of Serbia's honour. Her name was Mitra Reljić, and she was from Kosovska Mitrovica. She had taught Russian Literature at the University of Priština. She was originally from Sarajevo, which she'd had to flee, so she went to Priština, which she had to flee again and was the last Serbian woman to leave the city during the 2004 pogrom. The British got her out. She lives in Kosovska Mitrovica now, in a small apartment with nothing in it except for the books. Just picture her state of mind: Her most favourite books are all bundled up and ready for a potential new exile. She's a marvellous lecturer and linguist, and she could live in Belgrade or wherever else in the world that she wanted, but she's decided to stay in Kosovo until the very end, 500 meters away from the Ibar Bridge in North Mitrovica. I remember that she was quite attached to the Devič Monastery, which was the worst affected in that part of Drenica. She took me to the worst affected Serbian villages as well."

You returned to Kosovo again during the March 2004 pogrom, when many Serbs were driven out, their properties burnt to the ground, and Serbian churches torn down.

"I arrived in Kosovo when the pogrom was already dying down. I went to the Devič Monastery, which was burnt down, and found nuns there, some of whom remembered in 2004 the pogrom of 1941. Would you believe that it had been the second pogrom during the lifetimes of those humble women? During the pogrom, the nuns were taken into shelter at the Sokolica Monastery, and it was only after several days that they were officially permitted to come and see what was left of Devič. I remember well a young French officer from the team guarding the ruins of the monastery. I asked him, 'What had you been doing before this? Why didn't you save the monastery? What are you guarding now?' And he said, 'Can you believe what sort of savages the people here are… On both sides.' So I ask him what he means when he says they are all savages when some of them were setting fires while others had to flee. To which he replied, 'Old nuns are strange, they're savages… We offered them to come away with us, and they decided to stay. We had to use force to drag them out. They're savages.' Well, that's objectivity for you. For them, both were savages."

What was it like working on the stories of the forced organ harvesting of abducted Kosovo Serbs? What does the fact that there have been no punishments yet for these horrific crimes tell you?

"In circumstances like these, that story won't have a proper epilogue. Russia was the only country which was ready to stand by Serbia in this context. Now that we're under sanctions, we are unable to affect certain external processes and have no opportunity to do so. It was up to me to present to the Russian people the organ trade story back then. There was also the 'yellow house' case… That operation was run by an international network, I'm afraid. It didn't include only the Albanians – I even think that they hadn't initiated it either; rather, the whole black market organ harvesting business had started much earlier and just continued in Kosovo. In addition to the Albanians, the leads point to Turkey, Israel, even some of the poor former USSR federal units. This organ trade business still runs across the world. Yes, the system that was developed then is still in operation somewhere in the world. As for the forced organ harvesting of the Kosovo Serbs, the evidence and testimonies about it were transferred to the Hague, and that's where they disappeared without a trace. They've been put away somewhere, disappeared. They're gone."

What are your memories of the bombing of our country by NATO? What sorts of things did you witness on the ground – from Belgrade?

"I didn't expect that the bombing would last 78 days. I planned to stay five or six days, but things being what they were, I stayed here until the end. NATO didn't expect to meet such resistance on Serbia's part. I don't think they thought that it would last 78 days either. Pressuring the then president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević, which started in mid-May 1999, was a clear indicator for us that they were no longer ready to be at war. They stated to build up pressure and threaten to raze Belgrade to the ground. So there, even 19 rich and powerful NATO member states found such a long bombing campaign too much to handle. Back then, as we watched the bombing of a city at the heart of Europe, we thought it spelled the end of history, that there was only one boss and that that was it – we were all going to serve at its pleasure. It was in 1999 that what the Russian people are trying to finish now in the Ukraine started. In 1999, a war started in Yugoslavia that's been going on until the present day, but I hope it won't last much longer. Yugoslavia was then no more than a threshold that the West had to cross to move further and reach Russia. I was 29 at the time, and only then did I realize how infantile I'd been and how different the world was from what we had thought. This is why I had no doubts that this calamity and tragedy unfolding today would come to pass."

V. K.