“At present, with the war in Europe and seeing the long hand of the Russian interference also in the region, you would be a fool if you diverted the eyes of the Western Balkans, where there are still inherited problems that have not yet been overcome,” said British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, David Lammy, in a visit to the region last week.
“Putin’s interests here are to keep the region destabilized. It is in its interest to keep the countries that make up the western Balkans at the forefront, to have a destabilized population and to wage a cyber and hybrid war. ”
The six Western Balkan states are trying to become EU member states, a prolonged process in which geopolitics can be as important as the accomplishment of alignment tasks. They are faced with significant challenges, both at the national level and with their neighbors. Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, was pushed into a crisis while Milorad Dodik, a Serbian member of the country’s presidency, escapes arrest for his separatist policies. Meanwhile, Serbia accuses Kosovo of repressing its Serbian minority, while Kosovo criticizes Serbia for violence on its territory.
Experts and ministers of foreign policy fear that the Kremlin is trying to capitalize on ethnic and religious tensions deeply due to stir up new disorders through the Balkans, wrapping the own interests of Russia and creating even more problems in the back of the EU.
“Right now, they have to go ahead where they will continue to be Russia’s playground,” said a British official, has given anonymity to discuss the questions they were not authorized to comment on publicly. There is now “a fairly small window” in which the States of the Balkans must “stop sitting on the fence” before Brussels is rather consumed by the membership of Ukraine, they said.
‘Paradox is alive here’
Lammy believes that Serbia – despite the democratic decline, the comfortable in Russia and its continuous refusal to recognize Kosovo – really wants to access the EU, a process it started in 2009.
Politices
