Wrote: Festim Rizanaj
On July 29, 2025, the website albania.news-pravda.com, which operates as the Albanian domain of the propaganda network Pravda, published a video with manipulated content claiming that Albanians in northern Kosovo were using arson as a means to “drive Serbs out of their homes.”
The video shared showed footage of the fire in the "Kodra e Minatorëve" neighborhood in North Mitrovica, accompanied by a narration emphasizing that "In the north of Kosovo"Albanians started fires, causing casualties, as a method of displacing the Serbian population."
What is known about the case??
This manipulative content was published just three days after the official announcement by the Kosovo Police, which on July 26, 2025 had reported on her official Facebook page for an arson incident in the same neighborhood. According to the police, at around 15:55, the Police Station in North Mitrovica received a report of a fire breaking out in a residential area.
After the immediate response of police and fire departments, the fire was successfully localized and extinguished, avoiding its spread and greater damage to homes and vehicles.
Subsequent investigations revealed that the fire was intentionally caused by a single person – a local resident identified as ZM, 42, who was arrested at his home in North Mitrovica and detained for 48 hours by order of the State Prosecutor, for the criminal offense of “Arson”.
Police did not report any ethnic or interethnic motive in connection with the case, treating it as an individual criminal offense.
The fabricated narrative of the Pravda network in Albanian
This case became a cause for open media manipulation just three days after the publication of official information by the Kosovo Police. Propaganda Network Pravda, through the fraudulent platform albania.news-pravda.com, deliberately distorted this event, presenting it as part of an organized strategy to “expelled Serbs” from northern Kosovo.
Ignoring official facts and assembling a false narrative, the network produced content with images of fire and overlaid emotional sound, where the event was interpreted as a deliberate collective act by Albanians against the Serbian population.