Arben Fetoshi

Professor at University of Prishtina | Director of Octopus Institute | Expert in Propaganda & Disinformation | Analyzing hybrid warfare in the Balkans

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

📢 OPEN INVITATION TO THE PUBLIC

The Octopus Institute has the pleasure of inviting you to participate in FORUM 2026, on the topic:

“Electoral Integrity Under Hybrid Threats: Security Implications of Foreign Interference”

🗓️ Date: May 28, 2026
🕘 Time: 09:30
📍 Venue: Hotel SIRIUS, Prishtina

The forum will bring discussions on the challenges of electoral integrity, the impact of hybrid threats, and the implications of foreign interference for national security.

🔹 Participation is open, but for organizational purposes, please contact us at:

📧 Email: [email protected]
📱 WhatsApp: [phone]

We look forward to welcoming you!

#Kosovo #Election #HybridWarfare

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

March 24, 1999: When the World Said STOP to Milosevic

G.K.

On March 24, one of the most significant moments in modern European history is marked: NATO’s intervention to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. It was not a choice for war, but a response to a reality that could no longer be ignored, the failure of diplomacy in the face of a regime that continued violence against Albanian civilians.

The year 1998 had made it clear what was happening. Burned villages, displaced people, destroyed families, and massacres that were being documented daily by international organizations. In this context, the intervention did not come by chance; it came because the situation had moved beyond any control.

A difficult international consensus was required to decide that the protection of human life was more important than a “sovereignty” used as a justification for violence, killings, and expulsion. The intervention was not intended to punish a people, but to stop a state policy that was destroying lives.

The facts are clear: over 900,000 Albanians expelled, around 13,000 killed, approximately 20,000 women raped, and hundreds of settlements destroyed.

Today, 27 years later, beyond historical memory, there is another battle: that of narrative. In Serbia, this event continues to be presented as “NATO aggression,” while what happened before the bombing is relativized or denied. Reçak is called a “staging,” NATO an “aggressor,” Serbia a “victim.”

But the truth is simpler: the intervention did not happen without reason. It happened to stop a process of violence unfolding before the eyes of the world.

Anniversaries are not only for remembering what happened, but also why it happened. Because when the past is distorted, it becomes a problem for the future.

#Kosovo #NATO #March24 #HumanRights #GenocidePrevention #Balkans #HistoryMatters #StrategicNarratives #Disinformation #NeverForget #Serbia

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

THE SOPHISTICATION OF THE LIE
(“Weaponisation of culture” in Serbian propaganda)

Author: Prof. Asoc. Dr. Arben Fetoshi - Director at Institute for Hybrid Warfare Studies "OCTOPUS"

Serbia continues with sophisticated constructs to manipulate historical truth.

“Harvest” is a “film” that has tactically used co-production with some “Americans” to expand the deception of international public opinion through the harshest fabrication against the Kosovo Liberation Army, the United States of America, NATO, and Albania.

The masking of Serbian-Russian phantom claims as an “international” project about the Yellow House and organ trafficking, is the most brutal misuse of art, aimed at recycling the dehumanizing narrative against the KLA, on the eve of the decision by the Specialist Chambers in The Hague.

In the style of Hitlerian “Big Lie” propaganda, masked with “international” producers and actors, the film is described as a project of “great importance” by the Director of Public Diplomacy, Arno Gujon.

Announcing its premiere in Belgrade and its planned worldwide distribution, he claims that through the film, “Serbia is drawing international attention to events during and after the war in Kosovo, which many would like to hide.”

It does not matter that they themselves do everything to conceal them, that the “Big Lie” has long been discredited, and that Recak and Srebrenica have documented Serbia’s responsibility, as the hybrid strategy requires repetition and repackaging of the narrative.

The denial of war crimes and genocide must maximize “victimhood.”
Meanwhile, victimhood becomes possible only through monstrous fabrications, systematically repeated and presented in increasingly advanced “artistic” forms.

Through this project, Serbia is attempting to export the “Big Lie,” by emotionally influencing international audiences.

The strategy of victimization requires new investments in the face of exposure from investigations such as “Sarajevo Safari” and international reports.

So far, the Vucic regime and Gujon have used culture as a “weapon” against Kosovo.

RTS documentaries such as “Recak – Truths and Lies” (2009), series like “The Kosovo Dossier” (2021–2024), operatic projects, or international exhibitions are the preceding products of the film “Harvest.”

All of them have projected only one goal: the production of a “truth” in which Serbia appears as the victim of Albanians and the West.

Therefore, “Harvest” is simply the newest link in this chain of Serbian-Russian disinformation and propaganda.

#Kosovo #Serbia #Fake #Harvest

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

https://t.co/Mj8hDgF4Oy

[Arben Fetoshi @FetoshiArben]

After the indictment of the terrorists in Banjska attack, 🇽🇰Special Prosecutor with an indictment against three other serbs for "terrorism and espionage", in the Ibër-Lepenac case.
This is the face of Vuçiq’s 🇷🇸:
Peace - in rhetoric.
TNT - on the ground.

https://t.co/RC7cVhw0rA

[Gurakuç Kuçi @gurakuqkuqi]

Shocking fact: In 2009 Dick Marty admitted he had no evidence against the KLA!

In 2009, Dick Marty told the Serbian historian and diplomat Milan St. Protić a sentence that today collapses the entire myth: “There is no material evidence, and I do not expect to find any after ten years” regarding alleged human trafficking by the Kosovo Liberation Army. The investigation began from suspicions, not from verified facts. It concerned the so-called “Yellow House” in the village of Tropoja, in the Kukes region of Albania.

Nevertheless, the report was written by Marty. Not based on forensic evidence. Not on eyewitnesses. Not on bodies, traces, or any verifiable element. It was built on anonymous interviews, unverified intelligence, and unstable indications. In short, a narrative architecture, not a criminal case file.

And the most absurd part is that even Marty himself did not fully believe his own report. But the report, pushed also by Russia through its representative in the Council of Europe, Konstantin Kosachev, was catapulted and transformed from an “investigation of crimes” into a political campaign against Kosovo and the KLA.

Before this report, EULEX had conducted investigations and also found no evidence whatsoever.

And yet, the propaganda did not stop. A special court was even created to investigate “organ trafficking.” And what happened? The accusation of organ trafficking disappeared. Quietly. Without explanation. A de facto admission that the narrative had been fabricated.

In 2022, Dick Marty publicly admitted that he is under armed protection by Swiss police after a plot organized by Serbia, a plan aimed at eliminating him and blaming former KLA figures. So, not just a bad report. The game was far more dangerous.

Today, when the documents, investigations, and even the author’s own statements are public, one conclusion stands clear:

Serbia used every tool, including manipulation of international institutions, to criminalize Albanians and damage the state of Kosovo.

But the question that remains hanging is this:

If the “Yellow House” chapter was an example of a fabricated narrative… what other chapter lies ahead of us that we have not read yet?

#Kosovo #Serbia #EULEX #SpecializedChambers #Russia #Europe #USA #CouncilOfEurope #HybridWarfare #Disinformation

@coe @vonderleyen @_MariaZakharova @HelsinskiOdbor @USEmbPristina @realDonaldTrump @SecRubio @OSCE @OSCEKosovo @RitchieTorres @UN @RihoTerras @UNHumanRights @kajakallas @MartaKosEU @aliciakearns @eucopresident @EP_President @vonderleyen @EmmanuelMacron @GiorgiaMeloni @_FriedrichMerz @Keir_Starmer @bueti @MiRo_SPD @FarCanals @DorisPack2 @agim_musliu @GunterFehlinger @FetoshiArben @Sandulovic_N @i_videnovic @natasakandic @DanielSerwer @GermanAmbKOS @jonhargreaves67 @DailyShqip @ThisisKaltri @Romanistan1971 @petritmalaj @shkamberi @zpshns @FlamurKrasnq @albinkurti @VjosaOsmaniPRKS @L_H_111 @GlobalPatriaX

[Arben Fetoshi @FetoshiArben]

The latest publication from Octopus - a sharp and timely analysis by Iryna Sinelnik!

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

https://t.co/io5sYYm13m

[Arben Fetoshi @FetoshiArben]

Serbia’s interference in tomorrow’s elections – a threat to national security.
🇷🇸’s objective: to maintain control over the Serb community, as a political instrument against the Republic of Kosovo.
Don’t miss my latest insight into 🇷🇸’s political control strategy.

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

https://t.co/mKXofZ0uIQ

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

International Forum in Prishtina

Democracy Under Threat: Elections as a Geopolitical Battlefield

🗓️ Tuesday, September 30, 2025 | 📍 Hotel Sirius

The Institute for Hybrid Warfare Studies "OCTOPUS" gathers ambassadors, academics & experts to discuss:
Elections as a geopolitical battlefield

Hybrid threats to democracy
Safeguarding electoral security & integrity

🎙️ Speakers: Ambassadors from 🇦🇱 🇲🇪 🇩🇪 🇭🇷 and leading scholars from Kosovo.

#Democracy #Elections #HybridWarfare #Geopolitics #Kosovo

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

https://t.co/sgHKhROV0G

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

https://t.co/C2xltSIZeH

[Arben Fetoshi @FetoshiArben]

Our latest publication, authored by Prof. Dr. Ihor Todorov.
Highly recommended reading.

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

https://t.co/ztF2YTJ83N

[Arben Fetoshi @FetoshiArben]

What’s the meaning of the Brussels Dialogue while 🇷🇸 continues its aggression & hegemonist goals against 🇽🇰?
This is not willingness for normalization, it is a contribution to bloodshed, just as once under Milosevic.
#Kosova #Serbia #HybridThreats

https://t.co/RSO3XFaVhr

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

PROPAGANDA AS “HIGH RISK”

(The address of the Director of the Institute for Hybrid Warfare Studies “Octopus,” Assoc. Prof. Dr. Arben Fetoshi, at the session “Unconventional Security Threats and Risks,” during the 8th Ambassadors’ Conference, organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Pristina)

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In the current circumstances of geopolitical clashes, the Republic of Kosovo is a frontline between the democratic order and its enemies; it is the battlefield between the TRUTH and its distortion, as a preconditionfor the goals of Serbia’s and Russia’s expansionist policies.

The declaration of independence (17 February 2008) and the decision of the International Court of Justice that legitimizes it (22 July 2010), have revealed the narrative paradox – with their rejection and misuse – depending on the calculations of the Serbia–Russia hybrid war.

Vladimir Putin has misused Kosovo as a “precedent” in the aggression against Georgia (2008) and later Ukraine (2014 and 2022), undertaking an offensive of lies (Firehose of Falsehood model), to influence the international perception of the “culprit,” whereas Serbia has rejectedthe decision it had itself requested from the UN General Assembly, escalating hybrid actions against Kosovo through propaganda, armed attacks, and sabotage, via its espionage network and proxy groups.

Thus, a tendentious misinterpretation for narrative manipulation, camouflages the revisionist and chauvinistic ambitions of the “Russian World” and the “Serbian World,” turning Kosovo into a test for the functioning of the international order. Regarding the ICJ opinion, Professor Mark Weller (2009) states that “ignoring such decisions by a state that aspires to integrate into the European Union, undermines not only the international legal order but also the credibility of the EU itself.”

According to NATO (2016), hybrid warfare is “a broad, complex, and adaptive combination of conventional and unconventional means, as well as overt and covert military, paramilitary, and civilian measures, integratedly used by states and non-state actors to achieve strategic objectives.”

Meanwhile, the American scholar who conceptualized the term “hybrid warfare,” Frank Hoffman (2009), argues that modern conflicts are no longer merely “conventional” or “unconventional,” and in this context, propaganda is a strategic weapon that precedes aggressive actions, as evidenced by the attack in Banjska, Zveçan (2023).

The ideological basis of Serbian propaganda – a mixture of mythology, historical falsification, and ethno-religious nationalism – is linked to Ilija Garashanin’s “Načertanije” plan (1844) for territorial expansion through control of non-Serb areas, and the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences (1986) for the strategy of victimization, as a prelude to the dark era of Milosheviç with violence and crimes of genocide during the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.

Even today, Serbia continues the same strategy, now more sophisticated due to the opportunities offered by the digital revolution. Synchronization with the Russian strategy, by applying well-known techniques such as “emotional hijacking,” which aims to mobilize by arousing indignation among citizens, or “gaslighting,” which seeks to deceive at the international level through distortion of reality, serves as an instrument of “justification,” just as in the time of Milošević or Putin’s military interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014).

After the war ended (1999), it orchestrated coordinated smear campaigns through the strategy of victimization, for alleged “KLA crimes” and “NATO aggression,” resulting in the imposition of the Specialist Chambers in The Hague, where leaders of the liberation war continue to be tried.

Its propaganda strategy combines historical and political narratives as a coordinated instrument for hegemonistic goals: the myth of Kosovo as the “cradle of Serbia” or “Serbian holy land,” “Serbs as victims” of Albanian Islamic extremism, of NATO, and today, of “persecution or ethnic cleansing” by the state of Kosovo, as well as claims of supposedly “protecting” the international order, presenting Kosovo as an unresolved issue, the “endangerment” of Serbian heritage, “harassment of Serbian girls by the police,” etc., have the aim to:

· Undermine the Republic of Kosovo by obstructing its international subjectivity (recognitions and membership in international organizations);
· Influence international public and political perception, calculating benefits to the detriment of Kosovo’s integrity and constitutional order;
· Legitimize Serbia’s interventions through parallel structures and proxy organizations such as the Serbian List, calculating territorial claims;
· Deepen mistrust toward institutions, ethnic divisions, and insecurity, hindering the integration of Serbian citizens;
· Strengthen anti-Western sentiments through the demonization of NATO, calculating strategic interests with Russia and China.

Therefore, to answer the guiding question in this topic and based on Kosovo’s experience and the security frameworks of hybrid warfare (Hoffman, Shultz & Godson), the risk level of Serbian propaganda for Kosovo can be characterized as high. Because:

· It is part of a long-term state strategy, coordinated by Serbia’s political, diplomatic, media, and religious institutions;
· It is synchronized with Russia, which increases the threat level as part of a network with global capacities;
· It has produced concrete political and legal consequences, such as the Specialist Court, the obstruction of new recognitions, and the blocking of Kosovo’s membership in international organizations – UN, UNESCO, etc.;
· It has damaged internal cohesion by deepening mistrust and ethnic divisions;
· It has served as preparation and justification for other hybrid operations – the Banjska incursion, the attack on the Ibër-Lepenc canal, etc.

To neutralize this high risk, concrete actions are necessary to:
· Establish a National Center against Disinformation;
· Increase diplomatic capacities for identifying and countering manipulative narratives in international opinion;
· Maintain and strengthen partnership with allies and international institutions;
· Encourage civil society and independent experts on the front of the information war, as in the Baltic model with the “elves” network that detects, exposes, and neutralizes Russian propaganda in the digital space.

Distinguished ambassadors,

In an environment where unconventional threats often precede conventional war, diplomacy is the first line of strategic defense.
The defense of Kosovo is the defense of the international order, as much as the defense of Ukraine or Georgia.

[Arben Fetoshi @FetoshiArben]

NO COMMENT!
When the Ministry of Justice of a country that protects terrorists and war criminals, attacks the verdict of a Court in Prishtina, it is like the mafia accusing the police of disrupting “their order.”
https://t.co/bnzrLuT9LQ
#Serbia #Kosovo #Impunity #FalseVictimhood

[Arben Fetoshi @FetoshiArben]

#Petković reaction to Popović’s arrest, like a “fox whose tail was burned…”.
Defending the one who incited hatred and ethnic division, reveals Serbia’s strategy to obstruct and destabilize Kosovo.
#StopManipulation
https://t.co/PQOkRIhLVl

[Arben Fetoshi @FetoshiArben]

On the 15th anniversary of the ICJ Opinion, debunking Serbian-Russian manipulation against the International Order.
#Serbia #Russia #StopManipulation #ICJ #Kosovo

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

https://t.co/T6yOeRawCA

[Novinite.com @novinite_com]

🇷🇸🇧🇦 Denial as a Threat to the Balkans: Marking 30 Years Since the #Srebrenica Genocide @FetoshiArben https://t.co/wjooeJZM4j

[Octopus Institute @iskhoctopus]

https://t.co/yjeXofX5YX

[Arben Fetoshi @FetoshiArben]

Vidovdan is an ALARM!
STOP manipulation of history!
#SerbianPropaganda
#FromMilosevicToVucic