Czech portal says PPF helping Vucic

“PPF extended its muscular media helping hand to Serbian autocrat Vucic,” it said and added that telecommunications and media companies owned by the PPF group are helping to hold together the “illiberal axis from Slovakia through Hungary to Serbia and the Western Balkans”.

“Although Serbia traditionally remains outside the interest of Czech media, the mass demonstrations that have cornered Serbian autocratic President Aleksandar Vučić and his ruling Progressive Party (SNS) have nevertheless revived some timid interest in a country often said to represent for the Western Balkans what Russia represents for Eastern Europe.

“Serious Czech media, from public service broadcasters to websites covering international events like Voxpot, have rightly begun to monitor with greater frequency the largest demonstrations Serbia has experienced since the fall of the nationalist grave-digger of former Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milošević, at the center of which stand Serbian students who deserve the attention of their peers in Central and Southeastern Europe.

“What, however, has remained largely overlooked by Czech media is the Czech business populist footprint that the richest Czech investment group PPF established in Serbia more than four years ago during the life of its controversial founder Petr Kellner, who, as emphasized by his numerous and vocal admirers like Ivo Lukačovič, built PPF's international rise on the "courage" to do business in the East (in Russia and China) rather than in the West, to which many of his peers' attention and efforts were directed in the post-Berlin Wall era.

“At the beginning of 2021, PPF launched a collaboration with the majority state-owned Telekom Srbija, which media analysts have long designated in the region as the extended arm of Vučić's regime in the areas of telecommunications, media, and the entertainment industry.

“As Britské listy described, the connection between PPF and Telekom Srbija through the then Telenor was accompanied by controversies, including a leaked presentation indicating that Telekom Srbija's managers hoped to use the partnership to push the competing SBB out of the market. At that time, SBB was part of the United Group, the last large media group in Serbia that provides space for the opposition.

“More or less unnoticed by Czech media has been the fact that PPF, after merging with the e& group, backed by the government of the United Arab Emirates, simply purchased the entire SBB from United Group in February, only to sell part of SBB Total TV to Telekom Srbija a few weeks later, just after the major Christian and Jewish holidays, thereby removing the independent channels N1 and Nova S from its offering and further reducing their availability for most viewers in Serbia.

“United Group publicly expressed its outrage over the harsh actions of PPF, e&, and Telekom Srbija and additionally accused PPF of spreading "false information" about the entire transaction, but this minor (major) insider dealing for the shaky regime of Aleksandar Vučić will likely hardly change anything.

PPF as a digital emissary of the illiberal axis in Europe?

“Developments in Serbia will certainly be particularly interesting to watch, not only to see whether Vučić can impose some form of a transitional government, which could soothe the ongoing demonstrations while securing the survival of his kleptocratic orbit.

“As noted, Serbia is a key country for European integration in the Western Balkans, and its failure could help exert pressure on the very existence of the EU, which sits heavily on the stomach of a whole host of international players, starting with Putin's neo-fascist mafia and ending with the China and the USA under Donald Trump.

“If Vučić manages to establish some form of a transitional government, it could indicate that this entire carousel, making the Western Balkans an international friction zone, could continue, potentially evolving into a more problematic phase. Vučić is building long-term cooperation not only with the separatist leader of the Republic of Srpska, Milorad Dodik, but also with the Hungarian authoritarian Viktor Orbán and his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico. Together, they constitute a significant axis potentially extending from the Danube to the Dinaric Mountains.

“There is much speculation about the outwardly wild-sounding variant that the next Serbian government could be led by Ljubljana's mayor, Zoran Jankovič, a native of the Serbian town of Saraorci (who has a similar reputation in Slovenia to that of Pavel Bém in Prague), and whose close contacts with Vučić are a poorly hidden public secret.

A” perhaps worn-out, but no less significant mantra to conclude with, which PPF has remarkably managed to keep away from broader media interest, is that through PPF, the Czech Republic is on the front lines of these international media wars over public opinion and electoral preferences.

“The old sad news for all EU supporters is that if PPF's involvement in the media in Slovakia and Serbia (but also in the Czech Republic, as demonstrated by its interest in dominating sports broadcasting at the expense of ČT, not to mention PPF's dealings with the Hungarian government and its endless exit from Russia reminiscent of a Turkish telenovela in its length) says anything, it is that PPF is primarily defending illiberal interests at this front line. And this is despite all the propagandist claims from PPF's PR representatives about not interfering fundamentally in politics,” the Britské listy portal said.