FA: Russia is playing fire in the Balkans, NATO speed up Kosovo membership

The writing speaks of the need for Western countries to intervene as Russia is using everything possible, ranging from the religion of people to the corruption of politicians to increase its influence in this important geopolitical region.

This is the complete text translated without interference:

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the beginning of wars in the former Yugoslavia, Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II. Although Balkan states went towards democratic governance and integration with NATO and the European Union immediately after the wars, continued neglect by the West has contributed to a dramatic setback in recent years. Russian President Vladimir Putin is now exploiting his opportunity and using former Yugoslav states as the next battlefield to weaken NATO and the European Union.

Putin's efforts to push the Balkans into the abyss are part of his mission to restore Russia as a global power mediator. Like the Kremlin strategy in the Caucasus, Russia's goal in the Balkans is to increase tensions so that it can be positioned as the only regional mediator and guarantor of security. It aims simultaneously to show that neither NATO, the EU nor their members are reliable partners for any of the Balkan countries. As Moscow also continues its military establishment near the Ukrainian border, its campaign of influence in the Balkans serves as another theatre to challenge the West.

For many in the West, Putin's strategy is confusing. These analysts view the Balkans as a backward geopolitical field; they do not understand what Russia has to gain by interfering in the region. As the director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre said, “Balkan is not a key battlefield in the Russian-Western confrontation”.

The Balkans should not be dismissed so easily. Russia views the region as Europe's weak spot: its growing influence there threatens to allow it to deploy strategic military assets near a large US base and promises to provide it access to the Adriatic Sea. Putin's greatest goal is to turn the balance of power in Europe to Moscow's advantage, and the Balkans are part of this strategy. Moscow has launched information operations to fuel ethnic tensions and encourage protests, cemented arms agreements, embedded in critical energy infrastructure, and exploited long religious and cultural ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church to its advantage in the region.

Russia's efforts have been greatly assisted by the EU's poor response. Despite many years and billions of euros spent on preparing the Balkans for EU integration, the effort has stalled. The EU has not expanded since Croatia's absorption in 2013, and despite promises of membership for “out of the Western Balkans” Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia and Serbia ʹ negotiations on all practical purposes have been frozen. Wounded by various challenges such as Brex, the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of extreme rightist groups and the crisis of migrants in Europe, enlargement appears to be pending indefinitely. This failure has made the Balkans a visible target for Putin.

During the recent crisis in the Balkans in the 1990s, Russia was too weak to intervene militarily. Instead, it was restricted to a peacekeeping mission following Kosovo's 1999 war, which decided to withdraw in 2003. But there should be no doubt that even then, the Russian government saw NATO's expansion in Eastern Europe as an important threat to national security. . Now, with Russia's relatively stronger economy and army, Kremlin sees an opportunity to curb NATO progress by targeting former Yugoslav states. Western Europe was sleeping at the wheel the last time the war broke out in the Balkans -- the risk is too high for it to ignore the region this time.

Balkans as gunpowder

Increased corruption in Balkan countries has exposed the rift Moscow has exploited to further its goals. As the former Yugoslav states passed from socialism to free market economies after the 1990s, cleptocracy and illegal privatisation took root. According to Freedom House, the countries of the Western Balkans are all returning to “partially free”. Putin is using corruption to introduce economic, ethnic and religious forests into Balkan societies by corrupting regional leaders.

Serbia acts as a key player in the Kremlin's Balkan bid. Both the government and the church maintain loyalty to Moscow, which is supported by centuries of common religious and cultural ties, as well as by the mutual isolation of Serbia and Russia by contemporary Western powers. The Serbian government called for the creation of a Serbian <x0bot”-a Balkan parallel with the Russian “world” of Putin Qaeda designed to unite all Serbs under a common cultural framework. Serbian President Aleksandar Vuciq has more immediate strategic interests in Russia's intervention, while chaos in the region will allow him to be deployed as a force for stability before his 2022 re-election campaign. To ensure that the elections go in their favour, Serbia and Russia recently pledged to work together to combat mass protests and the various “revolutions that come from the West.

Russia responds to Serbian loyalty through generous support for the Serbian Army. Since 2018, Serbia's defence budget has almost doubled and it leads all Balkan states in defence-related expenditures. Despite US sanctions threats against Serbia, Moscow sent an S-400 missile system to Serbia in 2019 for a military exercise. Kremlin further increased this year when it allowed Serbia to stage Pantsir air defence systems - S1M. Serbia also expects a “humanitarian centre” headed by Russia, which serves as an intelligence collection institution located near Camp Bondsteel ʹ NATO's main base in Kosovo.

Moscow has openly threatened Balkan countries that have tried to strengthen their security ties with the West. He tried to derail a 2018 referendum on NATO membership in Northern Macedonia, and its ambassador declared the country a “legitimate objective” if tensions between NATO and Russia increased (the country became a member country in 2020). In the neighbouring country in Montenegro, Moscow backed a coup in 2016, just before its successful bid to join NATO.

Russia well understands that religion in the Balkans has always been important in promoting conflicts. In Montenegro, the Kremlin promotes pro-Russian policies through the Serbian Orthodox Church, which has denigrated the concept of distinctive Montenegrin and Serbian national identities and intervened in politics in the name of Moscow. Working through the church, Russia organised mass protests last year and replaced a non-co-operative government with pro-Russian leadership.

The Balkans' most explosive boxes are Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although Kosovo's population is more than 90 per cent ethnic Albanian, Serbs see the country as an ancestor homeland containing some of the most sacred sites of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Just as a civil war erupted from tensions between different religious and ethnic groups in the early 1990s, the Kremlin is now using the Orthodox Church to destabilise the country and the wider region. Russia's Orthodox Church has escalated repeated disagreements over religious objects, finally expressing concern for the “the fate of Christian shrines in Kosovo” following heated tensions between Kosovo and Serbia.

Moscow has also made it clear that diplomatic recognition by the United Nations of Kosovo's independence from Serbia will be impossible without Russia's approval. Putin often mentions Kosovo to justify the annexation of Crime from Russia, arguing that recognition of the country's secession from Serbia by Western countries created a precedent that legitimises unilateral declarations of independence of other territories.

Brussels has failed to make progress towards recognising Kosovo from Serbia, as did Washington's “Agreement” of US President Donald Trump, 2020, failed to make substantial progress on the core issues of disputes. KFOR, the NATO peacekeeping force deployed in Kosovo, has likewise struggled to preserve stability. In September, the Kosovo-Serbia border erupted in protests to stop the entry of Serbian license plates to Kosovo. This resulted in blockades and shows of the Serbian air force and the deployment of Kosovo police forces. Paralyzingly, Russia followed the event by mocking KFOR and asking the EU for inadequate mediation of continued tensions between the two states.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in 1995 is in crisis. The country continues not to advance from divisions between its Bosniak, Serb and Croat communities, and Russia has exploited these divisions to its advantage. In March, Russia threatened revenge if Bosnia enters NATO. Meanwhile, the Serb member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, Milorad Dodik, threatened that Republika Srpska, one of the two entities that make up the country, would secede from Bosnia. In December, the Republika Srpska National Assembly voted in favour of the start of a procedure for Bosnian Serbs to withdraw from state-level institutions, including the Bosnian Army, security services, the tax system and the judiciary. Besides Republika Srpska, the Kremlin has supported Bosnian Croat nationalists to promote the creation of another entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina. The top international representative in Bosnia, Christian Schmidt, lifted alarm bells in November when he said that “perspectives for division and further conflict are very real”.

PUTIN BUILDING

It is time for Western powers to wake up from the threat that Russia's intervention in the Balkans represents their interests. And they have some options available to them.

NATO must refocus in the region and give priority to de-progress tensions. It must send its Support Team Against Hibrid to the Balkans, as it did to Montenegro in 2019, to fight Russian dezinformation campaigns and other information operations. NATO members should also organise a “coalization of volunteers” to oppose Russian intervention in Bosnia, placing peacekeeping missions in strategic areas, such as the northeastern Brcko district, to prevent out of control of endangered areas. This force could complement the EU-led peacekeeping force (EUFOR), which is tasked with preserving peace and security in Bosnia ʹ but whose mandate should be extended to the UN Security Council, where Russia and China have veto rights. US President Joe Biden also signed an executive order to sanction those who threaten the stability of the Western Balkans in June; The EU must join these efforts.

All NATO members cannot be expected to support the Balkans, as Hungary and several other European NATO countries serve as representatives of Russia in the organisation. On the other hand, the United Kingdom seems to have recognized the severity of the crisis. It has promised to maintain “stability in the Western Balkans” and has warned Russia not to make a strategic “ ” in the region. London must work to turn those words into action by leading the coalition and willing to fight Russian intervention in the region.

Above all, NATO must accelerate the membership of Bosnia and Kosovo in NATO. Such a move would raise Kremlin costs for its Balkan operations. Russia has staunchly rejected NATO enlargement, and now, as the crisis in Ukraine continues, has called for a legally binding guarantee that NATO will discontinue military activity in Eastern Europe. Integration of Bosnia and Kosovo would send the message that the Balkans will not be left to face Moscow and that Putin will not determine NATO's future.

As was the beginning of the Yugoslav wars, or the eve of World War I, it may be difficult to convince the world of the importance of the Balkans. In the 1990s, European countries failed to respond with sufficient urgency to the crisis, and the United States was forced to intervene. However, this time around, it is the United States that has returned from the inside and is unlikely to intervene. So the burden will likely remain above the EU. Nothing less than the stability of Europe and the continued vitality of the EU and the NATO alliance are on the line.