Russia is playing with fire in the Balkans

The Balkans should not be dismissed so easily. Russia sees the region as Europe’s soft underbelly: its growing influence there threatens to allow it to place strategic military assets near a major U.S. base and promises to grant it access to the Adriatic Sea. Putin’s larger aim is to tip the balance of power in Europe to Moscow’s advantage, and the Balkans are a part of that strategy. Moscow has launched information operations to inflame ethnic tensions and encourage protests, cemented arms deals, embedded itself in critical energy infrastructure, and leveraged long-standing religious and cultural ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Serbian Orthodox Church to its advantage in the region. …

Russia reciprocates Serbian loyalty through generous support for the Serbian military. Since 2018, Serbia’s defense budget has almost doubled, and it leads all Balkan states in defense-related spending. Despite threats of U.S. sanctions on Serbia, Moscow sent an S-400 missile system to Serbia in 2019 for a military drill. The Kremlin upped the ante further this year when it allowed Serbia to procure Pantsir-S1M air defense systems. Serbia also hosts a Russian-run “humanitarian center,” which serves as an intelligence-gathering institution situated close to Camp Bondsteel—the primary NATO base in Kosovo.

Moscow has openly threatened Balkan countries that have attempted to strengthen their security ties with the West. …

As it was at the beginning of the Yugoslav wars or in the run-up to World War I, it can be difficult to persuade the world of the Balkans’ importance. In the 1990s, European countries failed to respond with sufficient urgency to the crisis, and the United States was forced to step in. This time around, however, it is the United States that has turned inward and is unlikely to intervene. So the burden will likely rest on the EU. Nothing less than Europe’s stability, and the continued vitality of the EU and the NATO alliance, is on the line.