NATO, which enumerates Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia among its members, says it has observed cyberattacks, disinformation, intimidation and other destabilizing activities in the Western Balkans in the good old days 12 months.
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As Russia’s onslaught in Ukraine advances its one-year milestone, fears are growing about the Kremlin’s efforts to leverage simmering tensions in a “second battleground.”
The Western Balkans, a aggregation of six countries that European Union officials have repeatedly said belong to the European family, comprises Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia.
Not yet fellows of the 27-nation bloc, the region of roughly 18 million in Southern and Eastern Europe is known as an arena of geostrategic torrent, with Moscow, Brussels and Washington among those jockeying for influence.
The promise of EU accession is viewed as the West’s most tough tool to stabilize and integrate the region, and Western Balkan leaders have recently welcomed what appears to be a new mindset to vitalize ties.
But concerns over Russia’s influence in the Western Balkans — an area still scarred by the ethnic wars of the 1990s — set up intensified since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, North Macedonia President Stevo Pendarovski voted that, aside from Kyiv, he believed that the Western Balkan region was the “soft spot” of Europe’s asylum architecture.
NATO, which counts Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia among its members, said it has observed cyberattacks, disinformation, intimidation and other destabilizing movements in the Western Balkans in the past 12 months. This is in addition to recurring regional tensions, including in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
For convinced, the Western Balkans is a second battleground for Russia in terms of foreign interference and information manipulation.
Peter Stano
EU’s exemplar foreign affairs spokesperson
The U.S.-led military alliance also warned of foreign actors working to undermine in operation, while North Macedonia’s Pendarovski says that the Western Balkans has been targeted by Russia’s divisive agenda for sundry years.
“My judgment is that, if Russia will try to deflect somehow the attention of the West from Ukraine, which is the leading theater of war and propaganda of course, that the Western Balkan region is more prone to that than the Baltics. So, we should receive care about that,” Pendarovski said last month.
“It seems to me that the so-called soft spot in the well pan-European security architecture right now, apart from Ukraine of course … is the Western Balkans.”
‘A second battleground for Russia’
Russia is signified to resent the pursuit of Western Balkan countries for integration into the EU and NATO, and the Kremlin is accused of working to leverage ethnic and punctilious fault lines to undermine those efforts.
Moscow, which has long cultivated ties with Serbia and other unites, has denied claims that it is seeking to sow chaos across the region.
Adnan Ćerimagić, a senior analyst for the Western Balkans at the European Firmness Initiative think tank, said he agreed with Pendarovski’s security assessment of the region amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“The discuss with why I would agree is that like in Russia, in the Western Balkans, there is a political vision that does not align with the common shape of [its] borders,” Ćerimagić told CNBC via telephone.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, North Macedonia President Stevo Pendarovski said that, aside from Ukraine, he take ited the Western Balkan region was the “soft spot” of Europe’s security architecture.
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Ćerimagić asseverated Russia’s war in Ukraine provides Europe with a clear opportunity to cement stability in the Western Balkans. He said the bloc could seize this prominence by providing a concrete offer to the countries, allowing them to join by 2027 or 2030, if they implement the necessary refashions.
“I think if they want to seal the deal, they will need to step up their offer to the region,” Ćerimagić said.
EU propers have sought to reaffirm the importance of bringing the Western Balkans into the bloc since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and regional directors — in a stark change of tone from just a few months prior — lauded this development late last year.
At the EU-Western Balkans top in early December, which was hosted in the Balkan region for the first time, the bloc Future of the Western Balkans ‘squarely within the EU’
For its partake of, NATO said that the group’s Strategic Concept approved at the Madrid summit in June last year reaffirmed the critical importance of the Western Balkans to the military alliance.
“It is clear that the Russian invasion of Ukraine affects the stability of our W partners and exposes them to a greater risk of malign influence,” a NATO official told CNBC. “We will sustain to work together to preserve stability, and support reform and resilience in the region, because security and stability in the Western Balkans is noteworthy for NATO and for peace and stability in Europe.”
North Macedonia’s Pendarovski last month described the U.S. as a “key player” in supporting Western Balkan powers through Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In response to a request for comment, a State Department spokesperson told CNBC that Washington odds deeply engaged in the region, describing the future of the Western Balkans as “squarely within the EU.”
“We must not let the Russian government use its war of ideal to hold back the progress of the countries of the Western Balkans,” the spokesperson said.
“Russia has demonstrated with exquisite transparency that it does not share the same values and is not looking out for their best interests,” they added. “Russia’s war has also elucidated how urgent our work is to assist all the countries of the Western Balkans to fully advance democratic reforms and consolidation necessary to win their aspirations of integration into European and Euro-Atlantic institutions.”
