Ljubljana’s triumph left an enduring impression upon the British too. In multiple proxy conflicts since then, London has taken the lead on psychological warfare, in particular, atrocity propaganda, vilifying official enemies and justifying intervention and regime change.
Since February 2022, a secret Ministry of Defense-created military and intelligence cell, Project Alchemy, has endeavored to “keep Ukraine fighting at all costs.” Fundamental to this effort are “information operations” designed to convince Western citizens, and Ukrainians themselves, that Kyiv can somehow defeat Russia, by grossly distorting reality on the ground.
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Ljubljana “needed a bloody, dramatic conflict to ensure the world did not lose interest” in their independence crusade. Thus, “they showered the media with details of battles that had often never taken place,” frequently “enlivening the day” with lurid, often unfalsifiable assertions, such as Belgrade landing “squads of special troops in plain clothes” across the country “to terrorise the population,” or plotting to target a local nuclear power plant and create a Chernobyl-style disaster. Journalists dutifully amplified these dubious claims as fact internationally.
Such was the deluge that “it was possible to report the war without ever venturing above ground”—“but, for those who did venture into the sunlight, the bunker war often seemed a fantasy.” For example, Western news outlets widely covered a purportedly “major battle” at Jezersko, a municipality near Austria. When The European visited the area subsequently, “greatly surprised” local Slovenian militiamen instead described a brief tussle with a few Yugoslav soldiers over a border post in which “no one had been hurt.”
Throughout the Ten-Day War, the Western-backed separatist government of neighboring Croatia was “carefully analyzing” Ljubljana’s informational offensive. They concluded the conflict’s “decisive engagements, which virtually guaranteed Slovenia’s independence, took place in the pages of the foreign media and, even more important, in the news bulletins of the major television networks.” Zagreb duly launched its own “propaganda blitz.” Croatian officials were instructed “to hold twice-daily press conferences, which should be as colorful and dramatic as possible,” while Western journalists were given tours by soldiers: