Flouting transparency requirements, a Serbian website is parroting Russian talking points and boosting Germany’s far-right AfD. In its content, secrecy, and the support it enjoys from Russian media, digital forensics experts say Eagle Eye Explore looks like part of a Kremlin influence operation, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) reported.
In 2024, the website Eagle Eye Explore went live with its first article, published in Serbian and English. The English-language headline read: ‘Why Serbia Needs Law About Agents of Foreign Interests?’ BIRN said.
The question was rhetorical, the answer seemingly obvious. Serbia was in need of such a law, the author, Ratko Nikolic, argued, in order to thwart the “neo-colonial” policies of the West and allow the “re-sovereigntisation” of the state.
Two years earlier, Russia had significantly expanded the scope of its own ‘foreign agents’ law, originally adopted in 2012, to the degree that, according to Human Rights Watch, “almost any person or entity, regardless of nationality or location, who engages in civic activism or even expresses opinions about Russian policies or officials’ conduct could be designated a foreign agent, so long as the authorities claim they are under ‘foreign influence’”.
Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has used the law to target journalists, activists and critics of the Kremlin and, in particular, its war in Ukraine.
But Eagle Eye Explore did not stop there.
Since its first article, the website has published hundreds more parroting disinformation and Kremlin talking points and extolling the far-right, in particular the German party Alternative for Germany, AfD, all while flouting Serbian law requiring media outlets to name their publishers and editors.
According to the results of a BIRN open-source investigation, the site bears all the hallmarks of a Kremlin-backed propaganda channel, from hidden ownership and cryptocurrency donation options, to its collaboration with journalists employed by Russian media and the AfD itself, as well as its promotion via pro-Russian Telegram channels and Russian state-affiliated media.
“The pattern you identified represents a characteristic signature of Kremlin-backed media ecosystems that has been extensively documented,” said Ruslan Trad, a fellow at DFRLab, the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, a US NGO.
In a 2025 study published by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and called Russia Paving the Way for Autocracies, researchers identified Serbia as a central hub for the spread of Russian influence in the Balkan region via Kremlin-financed Sputnik and the Balkan arm of Russia Today.
Sputnik and Russia Today have both been banned in the European Union, which Serbia wants to join, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In 2023, the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, warned of Moscow’s influence on media in the Balkans, saying Kremlin propaganda was “particularly effective in Serbia, where part of the local media and some mainstream political forces disseminate pro-Russian narratives, including throughout the Western Balkan region”.
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Source: N1
