Stockholm'daki kur'an yakma olayı ile ilgili bir iddia : "The Quran-burning action in Stockholm was paid for by Chang Frick, a journalist and former contributor to Russia Today,"

 The Brief — Russian covert action – cheap and effective

DISCLAIMER: All opinions in this column reflect the views of the author(s), not of EURACTIV Media network.

By Georgi Gotev | EURACTIV.com

Jan 26, 2023

The Brief is EURACTIV's evening newsletter. [EPA-EFE/ERDEM SAHIN]

For an official permit to hold a demonstration in Stockholm near the Turkish embassy, a former Russian propaganda TV channel contributor paid 320 Swedish kronor – equal to €28.70. At the demonstration, he made sure somebody burned a Quran.

The action infuriated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who said Sweden should not expect Turkey’s support for its NATO membership after this provocation.

The Quran-burning action in Stockholm was paid for by Chang Frick, a journalist and former contributor to Russia Today, who is the owner of a far-right website, and a presenter of the far-right Sweden Democrats TV channel Riks.

The Swedish publication SVT reported that Frick had asked a nationalist website “to put him in touch with someone who could burn the Quran”. Frick has reportedly said he believes that the payment was made in the name of freedom of expression.

Russia distanced itself, condemning the move.

“The action was carried out with the knowledge of Swedish law enforcement authorities, hiding behind ‘freedom of speech’,” a Russian official said.

Plausible deniability has been the trademark of many Russian hybrid actions worldwide. A particularly notorious example was Moscow’s denial that the “little green men”, the masked soldiers in unmarked green uniforms deployed in Crimea ahead of the annexation, were Russian troops.

Russia has every motivation to prevent Sweden from acceding to NATO, even if only for its secret services to be able to report to Putin that they achieved such a success.

Moreover, it has a vested interest in fuelling anti-Western sentiments. Following the Quran-burning action, the Swedish flag was set alight in many countries around the globe.

Sweden has for many years – wrongly – assumed its neutral status exempted it from covert actions such as these. Now Stockholm has to learn the hard way.

But Sweden is only one example. Destabilising other EU countries could be equally easy and cheap. The Ukraine-related letter bombs posted in Spain have been linked to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence, and a supremacist militant group in Russia, the New York Times wrote.

‘Active measures’ or Aktivnye meropriyatiya – covert political operations ranging from disinformation campaigns to staging insurrections – have a long and inglorious tradition in Russia. They reflect its permanent wartime mentality, something dating back to the Soviet era and even tsarist Russia.

In the Balkans, such cheap ‘active measures’ aim to prevent North Macedonia from joining the EU.

Hristian Pendikov, a Macedonian national of Bulgarian ethnicity and secretary of a Bulgarian cultural club in Ohrid, was beaten by three individuals in front of his office last Thursday. This sparked a diplomatic storm that is getting out of control – perhaps what the instigators were aiming for.

With Sofia’s demands for constitutional change in North Macedonia to enable progress towards the EU and with Bulgarian elections around the corner, the current spat has well and truly put relations on ice.

Both sides accuse each other of serving Russian interests.

Martin Minkov, a Bulgarian journalist and a former correspondent from Skopje, said on national TV that he doesn’t believe the three persons who attacked Pendikov simply decided to do so after a few drinks, adding that he suspected a Russian covert action.

He stressed that Russia was very much in control of political players in North Macedonia such as the Levica (The Left) political party.

But if it takes so little – a few dozen kronor or a few hundred denars – to block Sweden from NATO or North Macedonia from the EU, it means our Union is very vulnerable.

It took a spark to start World War I, and it came precisely from the Balkans, which nobody expected at the time. If many of us forgot it, the Russian secret services didn’t.

The Roundup 

Russia sent Ukrainians racing for cover with a rush-hour missile barrage, killing at least one person, the day after Kyiv secured Western pledges of dozens of modern battlefield tanks to try to push back the Russian invasion.

Coal demand in Europe went up for the second consecutive year in 2022, led by “strong growth” in electricity generation, where it has partly replaced gas as a backup power source, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

United Nations’ cultural agency, UNESCO, said on Wednesday (25 January) that it had designated the historic centre of Odesa, a strategic port city on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, a World Heritage in Danger site.

Russian authorities designated the independent news outlet Meduza an “undesirable organisation” on Thursday (26 January), effectively outlawing the site from operating in Russia and banning any Russian from cooperating with Meduza or its journalists.

Don’t forget to check out our Economy Brief: Make the pensioners solve the pensions crisis and our Politics Brief: Europe’s inertia on migrant returns.

Look out for…

Vice-President Margaritis Schinas participates in the High-Level meeting with religious leaders.

European Commissioner for Trade Valdis Dombrovskis participates in meeting with Prime Minister of Latvia Krišjānis Kariņš.

Vice-President Frans Timmermans prepares the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (COP 28) and meets with President of Colombia Gustavo Petro and Energy and Mines Minister Irene Vélez. 

European Commissioner for Economy Paolo Gentiloni meets Prime Minister of France Élisabeth Borne. 

Informal Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting continues on Friday.

 

[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald/Alice Taylor]