Turmoils in EU, US Boost Russia Influence in Balkans
The Balkans may not be a priority for the new US administration but Washington wants to keep an eye on a region where Russian influence is growing, Damon Wilson, from the Atlantic Council, told BIRN.
Natalia Zaba
Damon M. Wilson, Atlantic Council Vice President. Photo: Natalia Zaba/BIRN
a Washington-based think tank, says the Balkan region is not high on the agenda of new US President Donald Trump. However, the region would remain under America’s careful
observation, he added.
“Many of us watch closely what is happening, we’re aware what’s happening and we’re concerned about it,” he told BIRN in an interview.
“We’re going through a bumpy period. Russia is trying to disrupt the Balkans in the process of European integration, raising a question of whether this region really belongs to Europe, which has relations with the United States, and that’s frankly, really sad,” Wilson said.
Since the year began, a number of Balkan countries have been rocked by political and ethnic turbulence.
Tensions have mounted for months in Bosnia where the Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, President of the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, continues to toy with the possibility of a referendum on the entity’s secession.
“He is playing destructive role in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he’s playing with fire and he’s the tool of those in Moscow who want to keep this region divided and held back, because if it’s divided and held back … this region [will] not join Europe [the EU],” Wilson told BIRN.
In Montenegro, meanwhile, pro-Russian opposition parties are boycotting the country’s parliament, claiming grave irregularities occurred in last October’s general elections and disputing the government’s claim that election day last autumn saw a coup attempt.
The Montenegrin authorities say a group of Serbs, Montenegrins and Russians tried to organize a coup on election day, October 16, by planning to break into the parliament, kill the then Prime Minister, Milo Djukanovic, and bring a pro-Russian coalition to power.
“It is very disturbing what happened. It was a coup attempt, a decapitation attempt, and an assassination attempt,” Wilson said.
“From all the indications that I’ve been able to see, it’s clear that there are fingerprints that track back not only to the [Serbian] nationalists and radicals in the region but to Moscow,” Wilson added.
The pro-Western government is keen for Montenegro to become NATO’s 29th member but concerns have been raised about the growing presence in the Balkans of Russia, which bitterly opposes NATO expansion.
Ratification of Montenegro’s accession protocol remains stuck meanwhile in the US Senate, although it was expected to be ratified at the first sitting after Trump's inauguration as President on January 20.
However, Wilson insists that it is just a matter of time before it is passed. “This is not about geopolitics, this is about priorities and it’s about procedures in the Senate, but they [the US Senators] all support this [Montenegro’s accession],” he said.
“I’m a huge supporter of what Montenegro is doing, there’s deep and strong support for Montenegro in the United States. I think that [former Prime Minister Milo] Djukanovic should be recognized for what he has done,” he stated.
Both NATO and Montenegrin officials maintain that the small Balkan country will become a full member of the alliance by this spring.
The Balkans has also been disturbed by rising tensions between Serbia and its former province of Kosovo.
The Kosovo and Serbia Prime Ministers are set to continue EU-mediated talks on February 1 in Brussels. The meeting is the second in less then ten days, after months of escalating tensions that soared on January 14.
On that day, Serbia sent a train painted in the colours of the Serbian flag and bearing the words “Kosovo is Serbian” in 21 languages from Belgrade to the northern, Serb-run part of the divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica.
Wilson says that while Serbia might continue to have friendly relations with Russia, its only feasible future lies with the EU.
“I’m pretty confident about the long-term trajectory of where this country will go and where its place will be, because the alternative isn’t an available option,” he said, meaning a relationship based around Russia.
“It would not be a source of economic growth and investments, or deliver what the people of this country would want over the long term,” he added.
“If you look into the fundamentals I have no doubt that most people in Belgrade understand that if you want to have a stable, relatively prosperous Serbia, you’ve got one clear option. The majority of the electorate understands that if they want to have a better future, there is no alternative to Europe,” Wilson told BIRN.
Macedonia is another Balkan country in a worryingly disturbed state. The country has yet to form a government after the December 11 general elections, which it had been hoped would end a prolonged political crisis.
This revolves around opposition claims that as Prime Minister, Nikola Gruevski, the leader of strongest VRMO DPMNE party, was responsible for large-scale illegal wiretapping and other misdeeds that can be heard on covertly recorded tapes released by the opposition Social Democrats in 2015.
Gruevski claims unnamed foreign intelligence services fed the tapes to the opposition to destabilize the country.
“If you look what’s happening in Bosnia, if you look at the ongoing turmoil in Macedonia, if you see domestic debate in Pristina, if you look into back – and – forward between Croatia and Serbia, Serbia and Kosovo, you can see that some of this is politics, and this is normal, but some of it is worrying, because it’s an underlying trend [toward conflict],” Wilson said.
He said the ongoing turbulence in the region to some extent reflects the turmoil within the EU and, indeed, in the US, however.
Distraction from the Balkans in Washington and the EU had created the danger of “a vacuum in the Western Balkans,” the result of which would like be “nefarious forces filling that void”, he warned.
“When there’s an uncertainty in the core of Europe, there’s going to be greater uncertainty on the periphery of Europe,” he concluded.
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