The Balkans have been the center of the wonderful festival of strength for centuries. Russia has long played a leading role, supporting its Slavic and Orthodox Christian allies in Serbia and the region. The disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the resulting conflicts put the Balkans back at the forefront of European politics.
Today, more than two decades after the Yugoslav wars, the political arrangements created to balance the grievances of countless ethnic and devout communities are precarious. With much of the region seeking greater integration into the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), experts say Moscow is seeking to leverage simmering tensions to block one’s efforts. However, President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine could undermine Russia’s control over the Balkans.
Geopolitical antagonism over the region intensified for decades following the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and subsequent wars. While already tense relations between Russia and the West deteriorated after the war in Ukraine, tensions also rose in the Balkans.
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Attempts to integrate Balkan nations into Western institutions have consistently attracted the attention of Russia and the local nationalist and separatist teams it supports. With the specter of an unresolved standoff looming over Bosnia and Herzegovina and between Serbia and Kosovo, Western analysts say Moscow is trying to take advantage of existing instability for its influence and weaken the EU and NATO.
Analysts say Putin’s invasion has raised the stakes for Balkan governments. Serbia’s scenario is perhaps the most precarious, as President Aleksandar Vucic compares the EU’s efforts to isolate Moscow to his country’s longstanding ties with Russia, namely its reliance on Russian and diplomatic power for its position. So far, it has walked a tightrope, infuriating Moscow and many of its own ers by adhering to the UN solution that condemns the invasion of Ukraine and refuses to recognize Russia’s annexations. At the same time, it frustrated European leaders by refusing to enroll in the bloc’s sanctions regime. While the EU has pushed for sweeping bans on Russian energy, Vucic has reached a three-year fuel source deal with Russia.
However, some analysts say the war could weaken Russia’s position in the Balkans, where many lawmakers are not satisfied with the disruption it has caused. in eastern Ukraine it has angered many Serbian nationalists, who see it as legitimizing Kosovo’s claims. In response, Vucic drifted further and further away from the Kremlin. The war has also prompted Serbia, which relies on Russian imports for almost all of its fuel and much of its oil, to seek diversification of power: Vucic announced that due to EU bans on Russian oil, Serbia would build new refineries capable of processing crude from around the world and seek new herbal fuel materials from Azerbaijan and elsewhere.
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Meanwhile, since the invasion of Ukraine, the EU peacekeeping project in Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUFOR) has almost doubled in size. Some supporters of NATO enlargement took the opportunity to advocate speeding up the country’s accession to the alliance. The urgency in Brussels increased: in July 2022, member states reached an agreement to unblock long-stalled talks on the integration of Albania and North Macedonia into the EU.
Moscow has long sought to play a balancing role in supporting its Serbian allies. This is a purpose that dates back centuries, when the Russian Empire developed close cultural, political and devout ties with the Balkans. With the region disputed through the Western Catholic powers. and the Ottoman Islamic Empire, Russia has positioned itself as a best friend and patron of Orthodox Christian Slavs, especially in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia.
In the fashionable era, he saw Western interventions in Yugoslavia, namely NATO’s bombing of Kosovo in 1999, then a breakaway province of Serbia, as a sign of Russia’s waning influence. For Putin, who took power less than a year later, the Kosovo clash has been a basic grievance opposed to Western forces. He saw NATO’s moves opposed to Serbian forces as an intention that Russian interests would no longer be taken seriously into account in foreign decision-making. His government would continue to oppose foreign war crimes tribunals by Serbian leaders, withdraw its peacekeeping forces from Kosovo in 2003 and block the UN’s popularity of Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008.
Under Putin, Russia has sought to resume its role as an intermediary of force in European politics and a force to be reckoned with on the world stage. As EU security analyst Stanislav Secrieru writes, the Balkans are at the center of Putin’s arguments for going. behind “multipolarity” in global affairs, as opposed to what he sees as the US-dominated unipolar order.
NATO expansion is also at the heart of Putin’s court cases against the West; he argues that Western leaders have damaged their commitment to give up eastward expansion and seek to encircle and destroy Russia. Moscow saw close relations with the Balkan countries as a way to save its club in NATO and the EU, and a way to allocate its naval force in the Mediterranean, another long-standing purpose of Russian art. Montenegro, for example, had the last remaining non-NATO ports in the Adriatic Sea before joining the alliance in 2017.
Russia’s technique focuses on finding affordable or asymmetric tactics to slow down the integration of the Balkans into Western institutions while deepening ties with Serbia and the region’s Serbian teams. It seeks to exploit regional divisions and increase tensions between ethnic and devout communities.
In addition, the Russian government is mobilizing state-controlled companies, adding strength to the giant Gazprom and the state-owned Sberbank, to make investments in the region that it says will strengthen its political influence. unofficial state actions, channeling their help through proxies. It cultivates its influence through a variety of non-governmental channels, such as aid to clubs, schools, sports teams, devout centers, media and veterans’ groups. Feeding this comfortable force provides Russia with influencing a broad cross-section of society while providing Kremlin denial.
Notable examples include:
Serbia and Kosovo. Al block the popularity of Kosovo’s independence at the UN, Moscow is positioning itself as a defender of Serbian territorial integrity. This increases Russia’s popularity among Serbs and puts pressure on Belgrade to maintain friendly relations with Moscow. Putin’s state scale in Belgrade in 2019 seeks to further cement this relationship. Bilateral military ties have expanded, with Serbia buying more Russian weapons, adding air defense systems, anti-tank weapons and drones. Their militaries are conducting joint exercises, and some U. S. lawmakers say a Russian-run humanitarian center in Niš, Serbia, is a front for intelligence operations in the region. Unofficially, Russian citizens fund and organize nationalist and paramilitary groups, and they join through questionable military-style educational camps for young Serbs. .
Russia also exerts influence through devout ties. The Serbian Orthodox Church is turning to Russia’s largest Orthodox Church to bolster its claims in Kosovo, which is one of Orthodoxy’s holiest devout sites. Russian Orthodox charities, the largest of which is run by Russian billionaire and close Putin best friend Konstantin Malofeev, operate in Serbia and the Balkans, expanding concepts of a pan-Slavic civilization opposed to the West.
International energy and fitness relations also play a role. Serbia gave Gazprom a majority stake in its national oil company in 2008 and sources its herbal fuel from Russian sources. And the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia temporarily moved to supply doses and medical materials to Serbia. of its Sputnik vaccine, although the Vucic government eventually diversified its vaccine supply.
The Dayton Accords of 1995, which ended the Bosnian War, created a delicate balance between two entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, populated largely by Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims, and the Republika Srpska, populated mainly by Orthodox Serbs. CFR Lead researcher Charles Kuppan warned that with separatist sentiment emerging, this balance is under threat. Russia has fought Bosnian Serb separatism either officially, through the Republika Srpska, and informally through a myriad of cultural, religious, educational and paramilitary groups. Moscow has stepped up for Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who pledged to withdraw the Republika Srpska from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s national institutions. Russian arms suppliers helped arm Republika Srpska police forces while Russian mercenaries trained members of Bosnian Serb paramilitary groups.
Moscow is also favoring the country’s Croatian nationalists, who are also seeking to undermine the Dayton framework, to help reforms that may allow Sarajevo to advance its accession processes. Meanwhile, some analysts say Russia has used its control over the UN Security Council to weaken EUFOR. mandate, which led to calls for a greater role for NATO in that country. Russian diplomats warned that Sarajevo’s accession to NATO would be a “hostile act. “
Elsewhere in the region. NATO has been a flashpoint in the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Russia has strongly opposed Montenegro’s accession to the alliance, promising unspecified retaliation if it joins. In 2016, Montenegrin prosecutors accused Russian intelligence agents of helping plan a coup to topple NATO supporters. government. (The convictions in this case were overturned on appeal in 2021 and the nature of the occasions remains disputed. )
Moscow has also sought to curb North Macedonia’s accession to NATO and the EU, whose progress has stalled for nearly two decades due to a dispute with neighboring Greece. As Skopje and Athens neared compromise in 2018, Moscow fostered opposition to dealing through channels, adding investment to local protest organizers. This has led Greece to expel Russian diplomats and warn its longtime best friend who opposes interfering in their affairs. North Macedonia joined NATO in 2020.
Western countries and establishments have been involved in detail in efforts to stabilize the region since the first NATO combat missions helped bring the Serbs to the negotiating table in the 1990s. Since Serbia’s rejection of Kosovo’s offer of independence, the EU has tried to bridge the gap between Belgrade and Pristina. These talks have made progress on some administrative issues, Serbia still refuses to recognize Kosovo as a sovereign State, and tensions remain high. transit ties and initial steps towards a land exchange agreement.
However, some critics argue that Western involvement since the Yugoslav wars has focused too much on maintaining stability, rather than achieving better economic and political establishments to allow for more conclusive integration of the region. Recent years have seen the EU increasingly divided over the bloc’s expansion. . Croatia was the last country to join the bloc, in 2013, and while many other Western Balkan countries are considered EU candidates, their progress has been delayed due to unresolved territorial disputes or opposition from member states. The West’s apparent disinterest in the region, according to critics such as Ivana Stradner of the American Enterprise Institute, has opened the door to greater Russian involvement. rear burner. “
“The entire Balkan peninsula is about to be incorporated, sooner or later, into the Atlantic institutions,” he wrote at the end of 2021. “Given the region’s propensity for ethnic conflict, faster is much more than past. “
CFR senior researcher Charles Kuppan argues that the rise of nationalism in the Balkans attracts greater attention from the West.
The Economist reports that Russia’s Balkan allies are being forced to recalibrate amid Ukraine.
For the New York Times, Andrew Higgins explores Putin’s enduring popularity among Serbs.
In Foreign Policy, Jade McGlynn of the Monterey Russian Studies Initiative explains why the Kosovo war remains one of the motivations of Putin’s foreign policy.
For the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Paul Stronski and Annie Himes explore Russia’s goals in the Balkans.
Author Robert D. Kaplan offers a reader consultant on the Balkans.
Will Merrow and Michael Bricknell created the graphics for this summary.