Macedonia's National Security Agency (ANB) says it has uncovered a propaganda network in the country operating "in the service of Russian interests". The network, according to the ANB, isn't hiding in a dark room but online, behind cloned pseudo-portals registered with Macedonian domains.

"Through these pseudo-portals, fake news and disinformation are spread and narratives about current events are reshaped, undermining trust in institutions and inciting ethnic and national hatred and intolerance," the agency said.

What the ANB actually announced

Specifically, on 18 September, in coordination with the Interior Ministry and the Public Prosecutor's Office, investigative action was taken against a Macedonian citizen "linked to foreign actors who are the creators of a propaganda apparatus with a network of portals". His home was searched and the seized items are undergoing forensic examination. He is suspected of three crimes: inciting national, racial and religious hatred, discord and intolerance; disclosing an official secret; and spreading racist and xenophobic material via a computer system.

The ANB didn't publish a single name - not of a person, not of a portal. Nor did it give any details about who funds the network or how it is connected to what it calls "regional pro-Russian political structures". The most mysterious part is the disclosure of an official secret: who had a secret to disclose, and where did they get it?

The trail from this summer

The agency says this is a continuation of a case from 4 March, when a 30-year-old Skopje man was charged with spreading xenophobic material through the Facebook page "Historical Facts about Macedonia" and printing propaganda material. At the time, the authorities said he had been incited by a Bulgarian citizen, and the name that surfaced publicly as the instigator was Viktor Stoyanov, president of the Sofia-based Bulgarian "Macedonia" Foundation, who is banned from entering the country.

An investigative report published in July identified at least five Macedonian-language Facebook pages run from Bulgaria, which pulled content from five portals registered in Macedonia and one abroad, all with near-identical designs. According to that investigation, the foreign portal shares an address and ownership links with the "Macedonia" Foundation, and some of the contact addresses filed when the Macedonian domains were registered belong to the same foundation. The description in today's ANB statement almost exactly matches that model.

Stoyanov responded to such claims back in July, when it emerged that the authorities were investigating around twenty online outlets. In a statement via the Bulgarian news agency BTA, he called them "fake investigations aimed at independent civic media", designed to let the authorities arrest and prosecute their editors and journalists. A network the ANB says works in the service of Russian interests is defending itself in the language of media freedom. The Balkans have seen stranger masks.

The search was two weeks ago, and the statement only came now - without a single portal named. If the state knows what they are, where they're registered and what they spread, why do readers still not know which ones they are? And when will the ANB say who is behind them, by first and last name?