President Zoran Milanovic, who is running for re-election, said on Friday in response to a report by the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) on alleged support from Russian bots that these "people are scheming, confusing and misleading others" and described them as a "modern-day mafia."

“Who says that? Who are they? Is this some kind of Comintern truth? You know the joke – when two Irishmen argue, it’s the Englishman who started the argument. That may sound a bit exaggerated to some, but the traces of the English elites and the consequences of their misdeeds around the world, especially in West Asia, will eventually fall back on you. These people are scheming and it is not the first time that people have been misled,” Milanovic said in an interview with the news site Index, a day before the election silence, commenting on a report that has sparked considerable reaction in Croatia.

“They don’t kill people on the street, but they lie”

CIR’s report claims that “a strong influence of pro-Russian bot networks on the Croatian presidential election has been observed” and that Russian bots and fake profiles allegedly working for Milanovic’s campaign are supporting the election. The claims are allegedly based on sources and associates from Croatia, whose identity CIR does not want to reveal. Milanovic rejected the claims and called them “thieves.”

In the report, which was covered by numerous international and domestic media outlets, Milanovic was also praised by Russian media as “a “politician who does not want to help Ukraine” Milanovic immediately denied these allegations and declared: “This is a lie.”

“This is a kind of modern-day mafia. They don’t kill people on the street, but they lie, confuse and mislead people with concepts they don’t understand. Half of them don’t even know what bots are. They fabricate profiles, and in this case they published the identities of several real people, one of whom is a journalist in Zagreb. This happened after the daily Jutarnji List stopped its poll when it discovered a flood of fake accounts or bots – about 25,000 votes from the US in favour of Primorac,” Milanovic said.

HDZ’s consultants

In connection with the Jutarnji List poll, he added that the HDZ party’s presidential candidate Dragan Primorac “was caught stealing and cheating not with his hand in the biscuit jar, but in the sewer, and not for the first time.”

“And let’s get back to the consultants that the HDZ is generously paying. They have thrown everything into this ‘Untergang’ and burnt all bridges. That doesn’t mean they’re a Nazi party, but they’ve hired some consultants from Tel Aviv. I know the man,” Milanovic said, recounting an incident at a dinner in 2017 where the Israeli advisor called former Croatian President Franjo Tudjman a fascist, Croatia a fascist state and the HDZ a fascist party.

“I claimed that this is not true. Get out of here. This man is now working for Primorac,” Milanovic explained.