In March 2024, a document allegedly “compromising” for Kosovo’s acting Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, was published on the Albanian portal “Prapaskena.”
For months, this material was presented to the public as an “exclusive leak” from independent media sources outside Kosovo.
However, the background to this publication reveals a clear line of hybrid warfare: an operation by the Serbian intelligence service (BIA) that used journalism as cover and Kosovo and Albania as the theatre for disinformation operations.
According to information exposing this network, the document in question was not the product of journalistic investigation, but material delivered directly by senior Serbian BIA official Bojan Dimiq. The recipient and field operative of the directives was Fatmir Sheholli, who, using his profile and access to media circles, undertook to arrange the publication of this material with one sole objective: damaging the public image of the Kosovo prime minister.
The “Third Country” Method
After attempting to share the document with various influential figures in Kosovo’s media, Sheholli and his mentors in the BIA chose a more sophisticated strategy: using a third country (Albania) for its initial publication.
This tactic served as an “information laundering” mechanism. By being published in Tirana, the document created the illusion of neutral distance. It concealed the tracks of the BIA in Belgrade and the intermediaries in Pristina, causing Kosovo media outlets to subsequently republish it not as an attack coordinated by Serbia, but as “news discovered by colleagues in Albania.” Sheholli used his status as a journalist and his legal right to “protect his source” to conceal the BIA official Bojan Dimiq.
The Domino Effect
Once the material took the form of a news story published elsewhere, local media outlets cited it with less scrutiny, achieving the adversary’s ultimate objective: feeding the public with doubts about Kurti’s image.
The Soviet Doctrine
What happened in the “Kurti” case is not a new invention by Belgrade. This operation follows, point by point, the famous Soviet doctrine of “Active Measures” (Aktivnye Meropriyatiya), which Russian intelligence services and their satellites, including the BIA, have used for decades to undermine governments and destroy the reputations of opposing leaders.
This methodology shows that the Serbian intelligence service is using asymmetric means in which the media are not viewed as an information space, but as an operational weapon for striking political targets without leaving direct state fingerprints.
If we analyse operations exposed by Western intelligence services over the years, we find disturbing similarities with the Sheholli case:
- Cleaning the Narrative Through Foreign Media (the “Congo Fever” case – KGB): During the Cold War, the KGB wanted to spread the false claim that the United States was using biological weapons in Pakistan. The KGB did not publish the story in Moscow. Instead, it used a small newspaper in India controlled by it, a “third country,” called The Patriot. After it was published there, other media outlets around the world picked it up as credible news. This is the same mechanism that the BIA used with the portal in Albania for the document targeting Kurti.
- Using “Journalists” as Agents of Influence (the “Doppelgänger” case – GRU, Russia): In recent Russian operations exposed by German intelligence (BfV) and French intelligence (DGSI), it was discovered that Russia paid or directed pseudo-journalists and local analysts to publish falsified documents in Western media. Like Sheholli in Kosovo, these individuals used their media credentials to give credibility to materials prepared in intelligence offices in Moscow.
- The Modified “Hack-and-Leak” Operation (the Macron case, France 2017): When Russia’s military intelligence service (GRU) stole emails belonging to Emmanuel Macron’s staff before the presidential election, it did not simply publish them. Russian intelligence inserted fake and manipulated documents among genuine ones in order to create artificial scandals. The document delivered by Bojan Dimiq follows the same logic: creating an allegedly compromising material aimed solely at the emotional and political impact of the moment.
In the indictment filed by Kosovo’s Special Prosecutor’s Office, the defendant Fatmir Sheholli reportedly acknowledged during questioning that he had received the “Leptiri” document directly from Serbian intelligence structures (BIA).
Sheholli told investigators that the operational document concerning Albin Kurti had been sent to his mobile phone by Bojan Dimiq. In addition to acknowledging receipt of the document from the BIA, Sheholli reportedly stated that he subsequently forwarded the material to other individuals. Among them, he mentioned Milazim Gashi, whom he described as a friend of his in Albania’s SHISH, Blerim Canaj, as well as another person named Bashkim Pushkolli.
