Balkan countries, or better said, those in the Western Balkans region, are now forced into a situation of staying on the path to EU accession charted more than a decade ago, while at the same time slowly coming to terms with the new and not so optimistic realities within the EU itself.

The great expectations of the Yugoslav post-war era are increasing and rapidly shifting to a more realistic balance with the somber realities of the ever more isolationist Europe, the decline of enthusiasm towards the prospect of further enlargement as announced by President Junker and the ever widening rift between the new and old Europe. 

Inadvertently, these new realities result in growing domestic tensions on local political scenes. While the governments maintain their political narrative of keeping a steadfast course on the path leading to the EU and the NATO, the skepticism among the citizens is on the rise.

But unlike in other parts of Europe, such sentiments are still predominantly motivated by discontent with the progress of local reforms, rampant corruption and political instability, rather than the loss of faith and disillusionment in the idea of European Union.

The present discontent of local population with the progress toward accession can be easily illustrated with the ongoing massive immigration processes towards EU member states.

The economic motivation behind these immigration processes are a clear indicator that the EU policies of prioritizing stability at the expense of democracy, social equality, and economic development have weakened the social fabrics and political cohesion as prerequisites for sustainable reforms.

Despite this, it is safe to conclude that the absolute majority of countries in the region persist in favoring cooperation with the West rather than with Russia.

Changing social background

The first and most obvious reason for both governments and citizens alike would be the famous quote “It’s the economy, stupid”.

Unlike the situation at the turn of the century, when, in the eyes of the Balkan countries, economy translated merely into an escape from poverty, it has now matured into a wider understanding of economy as a concept of long term sustainability, growth, social equality, housing, education, political stability, and secure environment.

In that sense, with all its evident and obvious deficiencies, the European model is by far still more attractive than the Russian offer.

Balkan citizens are no longer thinking along the line of individual dubious get-rich-quick success stories, but rather as family economies that are drawing the basic outlines of a new middle class in progress.

The second reason, and a more political one to that, is the comparative disparity between the Russian exclusivist model and the European inclusive offer.

While we are all overly focused on the internal disturbances, discords, and even conflicts within the EU, we often fail to take into account the changing nature of the Russian model of integration in the post-Soviet era.

The war in Georgia was a prelude to the invasion of Ukraine as the globally geo-strategic and historical collapse of both the covert Soviet and overt Pan-Slavic concepts as an ideological guise for Russian nationalism.

The wholehearted efforts by Putin to impose the Euro-Asian Union as an ideological and economic substitute have failed short as a result of the imposed sanctions and the rising national and political self-awareness in the near-abroad region, especially in Central Asia, where the Chinese incentives have outmatched those of Russia. 

This handicapped new reality is even more obvious in the Balkans as a region that still holds fresh and painful memories of the bloody consequences of ethnic nationalisms.

While the appeal of Slavic solidarity is still very much vibrant and sympathetic among many citizens who are driven by romanticized epics of glory and unity, the economic hardship and the rise of the consumerist culture coupled with political and economic connectivity to the West are limiting the attraction of the Russian offer.

As a result, while there is still a considerable number of those whose hearts and souls are maybe still looking nostalgically towards Moscow, the minds and stomachs of the absolute majority are firmly turned towards the West.

Based on recent shifts in tactical moves by Russia, one can conclude that Moscow is deeply – albeit unpleasantly – aware of the new reality and fittingly trying to adjust its approach. Namely, the decline of economic investments in the region is being compensated with the increase of media outlets on mainly Slavic languages.

The main goal is primarily aimed at implanting in viewers the feelings of skepticism and distrust in western policies, achievements, and intention, followed by aggrandizing notes praising the uberpower of the Russian military might, and thirdly to preserve the status quo of the traditional lines of divisions, animosities, and distrusts between Balkan nations.

Influence and presence

The Russian approach towards different Balkan nations differs from nation to nation and it is based on a selective prioritization of influence or presence. In its core, this strategy is a reflection of the established western policies, and as such, constitutes the core of the reactive -- rather than pro-active -- Russian foreign policy strategy.

Traditionally, this approach can be most easily identified in relation to Serbia, the historically staunchest supporter of Russia in the Balkans. And, consequentially, the country that is of the utmost importance to the EU and the USA in their efforts to pull it away from Russian embrace and ensure long and prosperous stability in the region.

As such, Belgrade is the main target of the Russian strategy of influence, given its once unquestionable – but ever more challenged - capacities and capabilities to impact the situations in the region.

While these abilities of Belgrade are still remarkably potent, the recent developments raise a dilemma regarding the longevity of the Russian influence via a Serbian proxy in the region.

The generational change of guards at the helm of the political and security apparatus in Belgrade, the newly created geo-strategic realities of losing access to the Adriatic Sea and the somewhat occasionally turbulent but steady rapprochement of Serbia with the EU and the NATO are heralding a new – and not so optimistic –reality for the Russian influence in the region.

This may bring about rather dramatic consequences for the countries in which the Russian interests have so far been reduced to a mere presence.

The turbulent yet unsuccessful events in Montenegro in reaction to the invitation to join the NATO are just a glimpse into the new realities on the ground and the desperate measures that Russia is forced to take to ensure its presence as well as into the declining ability or political will of Serbia to deliver influence at the cost of possibly aggravating its own affairs with the NATO, i.e. the US.

The membership of Montenegro in the NATO marks the closure of the Adriatic Sea and the full encirclement of the Balkan Peninsula under the western security umbrella but does not fully eliminate the element of Russian presence in continental security hot-spots that still have a potential to explode.

The rising tensions within Bosnia-Herzegovina, resulting from the strained relations with the renegade 'Republika Srpska' are a clear and quite present reminder of a fragile peace established by an ever more outdated Dayton Peace Agreement.

The political reluctance of the EU and the USA to challenge head-on the provocative and openly antagonistic leadership of Republika Srpska results in an involuntary encouragement given to President Milorad Dodik for further strengthening the relations with Russia.

Often even more close-knit and deeper than those of Serbia proper with official Moscow, motivated by ethnic and religious kinship and the perceived threat of sharing the same “enemies”.

The case of Macedonia is probably the most complicated and therefore fragile of all the other countries in the region, as its domestic implications may have regional implications and dramatic repercussions.

A decade under the rule of Western-sponsored VMRO-DPMNE, led by the nationalist strongman Nikola Gruevski and his ruling coalition partner the ethnic Albanian party DUI, led by Ali Ahmeti, have resulted in an unprecedented rise in crime, corruption, and dangerous nationalist demagoguery.

But while crime and corruption are more or less emblematic of all other countries in the region, the stubborn persistence of Mr Gruevski to alter the national identity of ethnic Macedonians has deeply affected the internal dynamics and exacerbated the relations with all the neighboring states, thus ruining the foreign policy approach of “equal distance” established in the early 1990s by the late President Gligorov, which, in its essence, is quite similar to the official status of “positive neutrality” of Turkmenistan.

Mr. Gruevski's adventurous and pseudo-scientific promotion of the concept of antic-Macedonian, namely in response to Greece’s refusal to recognize Macedonia under its Constitutional name, has not only failed in building a unifying momentum but also provoked deep and irreconcilable divisions among his fellow countrymen.

But if the intra-ethnic wounds opened by Mr. Gruevski are regretful at best, the remedy he is trying to apply in the form of promoting unity based on Orthodox Christianity is downright disastrous.

This is not only extremely dangerous in a country such as Macedonia (being one of only two countries in the world without an official census in more than ten years) but it also presents an opportunity – and invitation – for more overt involvement of Russia along the lines of Slavic-Orthodox solidarity.

Given the considerable number of ethnic Albanians in the country (officially at 25%) and their growing resentment of DUI partnership with VMRO-DPMNE and neck-deep involvement in crime and corruption, this may further escalate the already rising ethnic tensions provoked by the two parties.

Benefiting from shortcomings

And yet, all the above-listed arguments that seem to prove a slow decline of Russian inroads into the Balkans may very well end up in a reverse course.

For despite the differential realities in every country of the region, there are several shared underlining themes that contribute to the Russian efforts to cement and develop its own long-term interests in the region by benefitting from the failures of western policies there.

The political strategy of the West has so far proved to be along the guidelines of an infamous article by British diplomat Robert Cooper (published in London “The Guardian”, 7 April 2002), where he advocates that “among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle”.

This colonial and utterly chauvinistic approach of the West to the Balkans, thinly masked under the academic and oxymoronic superficial term “liberal imperialism”, has resulted in policies based on favoring stability over a genuine democracy, by promoting and supporting autocratic leaders and undermining democratic forces.

In real life, the vision of Mr. Cooper was best understood by local criminal and despotic forces, all willing to deliver stability in return for the West's turning a blind eye to their criminal and corruptive enterprises.

Hence, this is nowadays the origin of the western sponsored Axis of Autocrats stretching north-south from Belgrade to Prishtina to Skopje and west-east from Podgorica to Belgrade to Sofia.

A decade later, this un-institutionalized yet very much present Axis has completely occupied their domestic respective societies, often to a degree of repression not seen since the early post-WWII period of notorious communist red-terror.

The attitude of the EU and the USA towards this silent erosion of already fragile democratic achievements in the 1990s was reduced to merely verbal scolding, but more often by turning a blind eye.

Preoccupied with other dramatic events on the global arena and assured by their domestic interlocutors and ever-less skillful diplomats on the ground that everything is in order, the offices in Brussels and Washington DC reduced their communication and interest solely to the political and economic elites, with less and less insight into changing societal dynamics.

In time, this approach led to the present growing conviction and disillusionment among the citizens, who are stuck between an eastern-promoted imitation of democracy and a western-imposed limitation of democracy.

This new sentiment among citizens heralds the emergence of a new political thinking that will certainly increase already rising tensions, but may also be seen as an opportunity for Russia to benefit from this perceived negative leveling of democratic standards between the West and the East.

In other words, while the political leaderships of Western Balkan countries are more or less firmly under the control of their western partners, the societies are shifting further away from the charted course and looking for other opportunities to break from the present Western-established Axis of Autocrats.

While this may sound like a political novelty of sorts, a closer insight points out the unpleasant truth that this is just an inverted view of the Balkans in the last decade under Communist rule, when political dinosaurs were still talking of a socialist path to the communist utopia, while the disillusioned national intelligentsia, the media, and ordinary citizens were already looking west, willing and ready to embrace change.

Comparisons are obvious and alarmingly warning, given the never-ending prospects of joining the EU and the futile expectations of witnessing concrete results of equally never-ending transitional reforms.

The social map of societies in the Balkans does therefore point out the risk of the Russian presence as equally strategic as it is with the influence.

Namely, the above-stated Russian strategy of reactive response aims to present itself as an alternative to the established static order and benefit from it.

In achieving this, the Russian approach to the Balkans perfectly matches the similar strategies implied in the West, by focusing on and infiltrating populist, far-right, and nationalist parties and movements.

Mixing and applying selectively local nationalist sentiments, religious and ethnic tensions are mainly present among the Slavic population, while among non-Slavs it benefits from the wide-spread and mix-and-match web of crime, corruption, and counter-intelligence; a web, one must note, established and promoted not by Russia but by their western rivals.

"Opinions expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Anadolu Agency's editorial policy."