When the appearance of truth overtakes truth itself, trust breaks. The BBC scandal proves it again. When a story outweighs facts, credibility disappears. That’s exactly what I examine in The Power of Perception. Reality is fragile. @chiselbury @Waterstones @goodreads @AmazonUK

For everyone interested in the future of NIS, the Serbian-Russian oil company, let me put it simply: MOL will not acquire NIS (or, if you prefer, the Russians will not sell their stake in NIS to the Hungarian company MOL). In other words, there will be no deal.

МОЋ ПЕРЦЕПЦИЈЕ Др Орхан Драгаш Књига не нуди утешне одговоре, већ јасно структурисану анализу и скуп принципа „перцептивне писмености“ – како да препознамо манипулацију, сачувамо аутономију мишљења и обновимо минималан консензус око чињеница.

From the very beginning of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, I publicly warned Western analyst colleagues, wrote articles and analyses, and repeatedly said that this was not merely Putin’s war, but Russia’s war against Ukraine. I warned against the relativisation of Russian responsibility. Many accused me of Russophobia and claimed that the Russian people were against this war. At the time, I called for stricter visa regimes for Russians. Pro-Russian, corrupt Western analysts warned me that my position resembled Nazi methods. Today, we see hundreds of thousands of Russians operating across Europe, spying for the Kremlin, and Europe cannot get rid of them! And I repeat: Russians are responsible because they support Putin!

Yesterday’s 45-minute Moscow performance, staged for the May 9 celebrations, was a touching lesson in historical decline. Red Square once shook under the tracks of machines that terrified the world. Yesterday, the only sound was the echo of Putin’s footsteps in the emptiness. Watching the “Tsar” attempt to preserve his dignity before a military formation with nothing left to show, surrounded by leaders whose main talent is surviving on other people’s crumbs, was almost uncomfortable. Here is the “magnificent” elite that came to glorify isolation: Alexander Lukashenko: The lifelong doorman of the Russian barracks once known as a state. A man who traded Belarusian sovereignty for three minutes of shoulder-patting and the right to move into Putin’s storage room. He is not a guest. He is inventory, brought out onto the podium whenever the host needs the illusion that at least one man still sees him as a “big brother.” Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Shavkat Mirziyoyev: Central Asian virtuosos who came to Moscow only to check whether Putin is still awake, while already carrying Chinese investors’ business cards and NATO security protocols in their pockets. They came to shake his hand and quietly check his pulse at the same time. Thongloun Sisoulith (Laos): A geopolitical giant from Southeast Asia serving as visual proof that Russia is “not alone.” His presence carried about the same weight as an amateur theatre group appearing at the Oscars. Sultan Ibrahim (Malaysia): Probably the only man on the podium there out of tourist curiosity, just to see what an empire looks like when it shrinks faster than a wool sweater washed at ninety degrees. Robert Fico: The Slovak “revolutionary” sneaking around Moscow like a cheating husband afraid to answer calls from his wife (Brussels). He came to lay flowers, but carefully enough that nobody important would notice, pretending to be a bridge in a place where all bridges collapsed long ago. Milorad Dodik (BiH, Republika Srpska): The most persistent geopolitical groupie in history, landing in Moscow more often than the average person visits the dentist. Back home he plays the Balkan strongman, while in the Kremlin he serves exclusively as cheap scenery and a statistical error whose name Putin forgets before the plane even leaves the runway. He is the uninvited guest convinced he has “special ties” with the star of the evening, while the host actually uses him as a remote control for creating chaos in the neighbourhood and filling an empty chair in the camera frame. North Korean “extras”: For the first time on Moscow asphalt, soldiers serving as human currency with which Kim Jong Un pays for Russian grain and oil. Their presence is the final proof that the “world’s second superpower” has been reduced to importing human flesh from the darkest basement on the planet. And while the “powerful” guests yawned and the tanks remained in garages (or somewhere in the mud of Donbas) Putin stood there alone. The man who wanted to redraw the world’s borders ended up hosting the saddest gathering imaginable, where the main attraction was a single old T-34 tank, as lonely as his politics. A perfect picture of Russia in 2026: full of history, with no future at all, and guests who are there only until the bill arrives.

The EU has finally adopted its 20th package of sanctions against Russia - the most extensive so far. For the first time, the measures also target entities that help Russia sell and procure goods: banks, ports, insurance companies, shipping, and digital payments, including crypto. Everyone should understand that any assistance to the aggressor Russia comes at a cost - and it is a high one. After this, even Serbia, which has not imposed sanctions on Russia, can no longer conduct any kind of business with it. tomorrowsaffairs.com/eu-sanc…

Book review here: eualive.net/book-review-the-…

The Trump administration is definitely working for the Russians. The operating licence for the Russian-Serbian oil company NIS has been extended until June because the Russians have not yet completed negotiations on the sale of their stake in the company, so the Americans are effectively helping them by extending the deadline.

Finally in Serbian! The Power of Perception – When Reality Loses the Battle is now published by @SluzbeniGlasnik , following its UK edition (@chiselbury ) and Italian edition (@cacuccieditore ). Romanian and Turkish translations are currently underway.

Hungarians and Serbs share one thing: they don’t like outsiders meddling in their internal affairs, especially in elections. Mr. @sandrogozi will help Vučić’s opponents just as much as @JDVance helped Viktor Orbán — by supporting him.

The idea of a "Serbian Magyar" is politically attractive but analytically unsustainable – because in Hungary there was a conflict between a pro-Russian and a pro-European option. That conflict does not exist in Serbia. eualive.net/the-serbian-pete…

The "Serbian Péter Magyar" does not exist eualive.net/the-serbian-pete… In Hungary, there was a conflict between pro-Russian and pro-European options. Such a conflict does not exist in Serbia. By @ODragas

The results of yesterday’s elections in Hungary are yet another indication of how those aligned with Vladimir Putin and those who see his Russia as an ally ultimately fare. The same lesson was already evident in the cases of Assad and Syria, Maduro and Venezuela, and Iran.

I published this article a few days ago. kyivpost.com/opinion/73594

🚨EXCLUSIVE: Today, Britain’s MI6, Germany’s BND, and France’s DGSE again warned Viktor Orbán not to subvert the electoral outcome through manufactured chaos or a false-flag operation involving Russia’s GRU and SVR. Hungarians have voted - their will must be respected.

The backlash against @jacindaardern is built on a misreading of a poorly phrased sentence. But the substance of her warning is accurate and highly relevant. The problem today is not “too much free speech.” The problem is the erosion of a shared reality. In a world where everyone has their own “truth,” facts are no longer the starting point of debate, but just another option among competing narratives. Algorithms do not distinguish between truth and falsehood. They amplify what triggers reaction. And reaction is most easily driven by conflict, fear, and manipulation. That is not freedom. It is informational chaos. When @jacindaardern speaks about the abuse of free speech, she is not calling for censorship in an authoritarian sense. She is pointing to something else: without responsibility, there is no freedom, only a space where the most aggressive narratives overwhelm everything else. In such an environment, truth does not disappear because it is banned. It disappears because it becomes invisible. That is the distinction many choose to ignore. The real struggle today is not between freedom and censorship. It is between truth and perception. And in that struggle, without responsibility as a governing principle, truth cannot prevail.

Securing Viktor Orban’s victory is an existential political battle for Moscow, and it is backing him with everything it has. Meanwhile, what are the EU and Western governments doing - standing aside under the pretext of non-interference?