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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Anything involving Serbia is subject to serious trolling campaigns. Serbia and its borders have been the cause of multiple wars in the 90s, and they're the only real Russia-aligned nation in the Balkans so Putin is spending a shit ton of money on propaganda campaigns for his friend Aleksander Vucic.

Personal guess, I think that Russia is also strongly responsible for the current bullshit going on in Bosnia where the Serbian minority is riled up beyond belief; I would not be surprised if that is the cause for the next war, and had Ukraine not beaten up the Russians so strongly I bet that the original plan was to violently break apart Bosnia after Kyiv had fallen and the Western nations were too busy to deal with Ukraine to open up yet another front.

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> Personal guess, I think that Russia is also strongly responsible for the current bullshit going on in Bosnia

the 'current' bullshit has been going on for decades though; there's no need for Russian involvement to make it flare up occasionally (e.g. in the run-up to general elections usually). my impression is it's just Serbia feeling empowered and opportunistically using (the global focus on) Russian invasion of Ukraine to further their goals in Bosnia.

>I bet that the original plan was to violently break apart Bosnia after Kyiv had fallen

How exactly would Russia get to Bosnia?

Serbia doesn't need Russia for the military part, they have enough goons on their own.

The key thing is, if had Kyiv fallen, do you think that the Western nations would have had time and resources to care about the Dayton accords and intervene again? I seriously doubt it and I'm pretty certain the Serbians came to the same conclusion.

Thankfully though, Kyiv held up, and the Serbians were forced to cancel their plans since contrary to expectations the Western nations did manage to get a reasonably united response against the Russian aggression.

The problem remaining is that ethnical tensions still are high and there's not much effort being done to defuse them, partially because everyone's attention is on Ukraine at the moment.

Local sentiment supports your view as well. Lots of my friends and family (hi from Sarajevo) hold belief that if Ukraine had fallen within couple of days there would be war here.

> to open up yet another front

You should have a good look at the map.

Didn't stop Russia backing Serbian during the previous unpleasantness.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11753050

(Undoubtedly Blunt is exaggerating the story, but Russian forces were definitely present.)

yeah but "trolling campaigns" is social media..

why is it unreasonable to read a newspaper in any language?

SEO spam is just as much of an avenue for propaganda farms as social media is. When people actively search for something, they'll turn to Google, so getting "your" narrative in the first two pages is very important for the propagandists - and it's made easier by the simple fact that no tech company invests money into moderation staff that actually speaks the language and knows context to determine if something is spam or not.

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