Home » War in Ukraine Dangerously Divides the Western Balkans – Pierre Haski

War in Ukraine Dangerously Divides the Western Balkans – Pierre Haski

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War in Ukraine Dangerously Divides the Western Balkans – Pierre Haski

The war in Ukraine caused a sharp rise in temperature in another area of ​​Europe, the Western Balkans. On 6 June Sergej Lavrov, head of Russian diplomacy, was on his way to Serbia when his plane had to reverse route and return to Moscow. In fact, three states had denied the overflight permit: Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Montenegro.

What do these three states have in common? They are part of NATO and one of them, Bulgaria, is also part of the European Union. Lavrov, as expected, went on a rampage and called the refusal to fly over “scandalous”, stressing that “the unlikely happened”.

Serbia also reacted harshly, stating that the countries that blocked Lavrov’s plane “dream of defeating Russia”. “Serbia is proud not to be involved in anti-Russian hysteria, and the countries that carry it forward will have time to be ashamed of it,” said a Serbian minister.

The plagues of the former Yugoslavia
The diplomatic incident will not remain without consequences, but will reopen old wounds and fracture lines never erased after the wars linked to the collapse of the former Yugoslavia in the nineties.

Serbia retains the bitter memory of the NATO bombings (including on the capital Belgrade) during the war that led to Kosovo’s independence in 1999. The cultural and religious affinities with Russia also led it to refuse to condemn it. invasion of Ukraine and to participate in Western sanctions against Russia. According to polls, the majority of Serbs support Russia in the conflict in Ukraine.

But at the same time Serbia is a candidate for membership of the European Union, and its president Aleksandar Vučić maintains an ambiguous neutrality in order not to compromise anything. However, this relative neutrality will be severely tested in the coming weeks.

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The Russian shadow hovers over the Balkan region, one of the privileged targets of the information battle waged by Russia for years now. Moscow diplomacy seeks to thwart ties with NATO and the European Union and to keep these countries in a geopolitical no-man’s-land that is more favorable to Russian interests.

As analyst Sylvain Zeghni pointed out last month in a speech in Le Monde, “by stoking territorial conflicts, supporting secessionist policies and undermining democratic institutions, the Kremlin could plunge the region into chaos without sending a single tank.”

The weak link in the region could be Bosnia and Herzegovina, the scene of one of the worst wars of the nineties and currently exposed to the strong risk of a new secession of the Bosnian Serbs. Europeans are trying to prevent this drift, because it would risk re-awakening old conflicts. Russia, however, can leverage Slavic and Orthodox nationalism.

It is in this unstable context that French President Emmanuel Macron last month put forward his proposal for a “European political community” to offer a reception structure to the Balkan countries but also to Ukraine and neighboring countries, while waiting to open the gates of the European Union in the more distant future.

The proposal was received coldly, but this idea or other initiatives will be indispensable to stabilize a region that has been neglected for too long. Lavrov’s abortion visit only reminds us of the urgency.

(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)

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