In the Western Balkans, peace and prosperity are not what you take for granted – and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine only served to revive memories of what went wrong for some, chiefly from their perspective, and right for others. Much has changed in the region since the 1990s bloodshed, which saw millions of people lose their homes, thousands flee to Europe, and hundreds of thousands dead.
While Croatia and Slovenia, who were among the first to declare independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, became fully-fledged members of the European Union and NATO, Albania, North Macedonia, and Montenegro, which seceded from Serbia in 2006, only joined the Alliance.
In the meantime, the non-bloc trio of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, which proclaimed its independence from Serbia in 2008, are eyeing EU and, in Sarajevo and Pristina’s case, NATO memberships.
A cursory glance offers a promising outlook for the region’s development. But with ethnic divisions still rife across the region, with towns like Mostar split into Croatian and Bosnian parts, Banja Luka and North Kosovo being dominated by ethnic Serbian communities, Serbia’s historical grudges, and Moscow’s rampant influence, it appears that the post-war setup is slowly beginning to wear thin.
In January 2022, when Russia continued to amass its troops to launch an all-out war in Ukraine, the US Treasury sanctioned Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik of the Srpska Republic, accusing him of attempts to dismantle the 1995 Dayton Agreements, which put an end to the war in Bosnia.
Just a few months later, Bosnian Serbs took to the streets of Banja Luka, the administrative center of the Srpska Republic, in response to the government’s decision to suspend a law relating to territorial ownership rights. During the protest, local war veterans reminded the crowd that the combatants created the Republic with their blood, promising to count the heads of those willing to defend the Srpska Republic and inform Sarajevo of the result – hardly a positive promise in the Balkans’ codebook of communication.
Meanwhile, during a UN session on April 20, Kosovo Deputy PM Donika Gërvalla-Schwarz accused Serbia and Russia of being the biggest threats to peace in the region, noting that Russia is carrying out genocide in Ukraine – with North Macedonia also qualifying it as such.
In response, Serbia claimed that non-Albanian citizens, including Serbs, are being discriminated against while Russia expressed concern about human rights violations as Kosovo’s desire to create an army and join NATO, a point of Russia’s obsession in recent months.
For Moscow, which views the Western Balkans as another historical extension of itself and a bastion of Slavism and Orthodoxy, the ever-present tensions in the region, fanned by Russia’s mildly punished imperialistic and genocidal ambitions in Ukraine, are only beneficial.
Especially since Serbia is always ready to play the anti-NATO card.
On the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić announced that he will condemn Russia’s recognition of the two enclave republics in Donbas only if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounces on TV the contentious 1999 NATO bombardment of Belgrade.
Vučić quid pro quo request, – which is all the more bizarre as Kyiv opposed the bombardment – is illustrative of Serbia’s inability to part with its past status as the power center of Yugoslavia or condemn figures like Ratko Mladić, the colonel-general who led the Army of Republika Srpska and is responsible for the Srebrenica massacre, with murals in Belgrade still devoted to him.
The fact that Serbia has been an EU candidate country since 2009 has done little to curb the power-reminiscent sentiments or bury the Belgrade-Moscow axis, fueled by China’s hefty investments in the country and the entire region.
While Belgrade is refusing to join the sanctions introduced by the EU against Russia, let alone send tanks like Slovenia did, in both 2014 and 2022, claiming that the West is punishing it for “its independent foreign policy”, it has also bolstered its cooperation with the Russian military over the years. Since 2016, it has been hosting a Russian military base disguised as a humanitarian center.
It also unveiled the Russian Ministry of Defense liaison office in Belgrade and held the “SHIELD 2022” demonstration at the Colonel-Pilot Milenko Pavlović military airfield in Batajnica in April, unveiling modern jetfighters that, according to one of the attendees from Montenegro’s capital Podgorica, so nicely smell of kerosine.
While it is clear that the wounds of the past have not healed in this historically highly-charged region, the question of whether Serbia, its ethnic minorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, or any other actors, both local and national, that the Western Balkans has in abundance, will try to restore “grand historical fairness” like Russia is trying to in Ukraine, is unclear.
Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, who continues to openly flirt with Russia and magnify his political importance by claiming that NATO purportedly wanted to kidnap him, was sanctioned by the U.K., alongside his ally Zeljka Cvijanovic, for his efforts “to undermine the legitimacy and functionality of the State of Bosnia and Herzegovina” in April.
Meanwhile, the Commander of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Senad Masovic, announced in April that Bosnia and Herzegovina will “very soon” receive new weapons, including Javelins against the backdrop of threats issued by the Russian envoy to the country to repeat its “special military operation” if Sarajevo pursues NATO membership.
Had Russia’s invasion of Ukraine happened quickly, as planned, the likelihood of some special blitzkrieg military operation taking place in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, or even Montenegro, where the new pro-western government is feeble and pro-Serbian sentiment is still strong, would have been higher.
Yet, even in the current protracted version of war, with restrictions yet to fully cripple the Russian economy and Serbia receiving warnings from the German parliament for its unwillingness to join in the sanctions, the risk of tensions escalating remains high.
More so since the EU’s public allure in Serbia has effectively failed. A poll by Ipsos in April showed that only 35% of Serbs support accession to the Union, with 44% opposing it. By comparison, in 2009, 73% of the population backed membership.
With the EU and NATO, which only welcomes countries with arms wide open that it likes, lacking a clear-cut plan on the region’s integration into it, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine proving that aggravation and grudges are capable of eclipsing reason, the situation might deteriorate at any point in time.
