WORLD NEWS FOR MONTENEGRO DIASPORA
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Source: ANTENA M – Author: M.J. GDNUS
Alarms are sounding in Belgrade, Kosovo, and Sarajevo, as noted in POLITICO's article by Sam Blewett.
While Europe's attention has been focused on Ukraine, tensions in the Western Balkans have been simmering, and leaders in the region, as well as in the UK, are concerned that Russian President Vladimir Putin may exploit this moment to further manipulate the troubled lines of the former Yugoslavia.
The Western Balkans is described as the "second hotspot" by senior officials in the UK government, and as the situation heats up, Britain advocates for the inclusion of all six countries in the European Union as a means of defending against Russian influence.
“At this point, with the war in Europe and also looking at the long arm of Russian interference in the region, you’d be a fool to take your eye off the Western Balkans, where there are still issues of a legacy that have yet to be resolved,” said UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy to POLITICO during his visit to the region last week.
“Putin’s interests here are to keep the region destabilized. It is in his interest to keep the countries of the Western Balkans on edge, to have a destabilized population, and to conduct cyber and hybrid warfare.”
All six Western Balkan countries are trying to join the EU, a lengthy process where geopolitics can be as important as fulfilling alignment tasks. They face significant challenges, both internally and with their neighbors. Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, has been pushed into crisis as Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik avoided arrest due to his separatist policies. Meanwhile, Serbia accuses Kosovo of repressing its Serbian minority, while Kosovo blames Serbia for violence on its territory, the author provides context.
Foreign policy experts and ministers fear that the Kremlin may attempt to exploit deeply rooted ethnic and religious tensions to fuel further unrest across the Balkans, cementing Russia’s interests and creating even more problems in the EU’s backyard.
“Right now, they need to move forward or it will continue to be a Russian playground,” said one British official, speaking anonymously to discuss matters they are not authorized to comment on publicly. There is now “a pretty small window” for the Balkan countries to “stop sitting on the sidelines” before Brussels gets occupied with Ukraine's accession, these sources told POLITICO.
‘The Paradox Is Alive Here’
Lammy believes that Serbia – despite its democratic backsliding, catering to Russia, and continuous refusal to recognize Kosovo – genuinely wants to join the EU, a process it started in 2009.
“But there are different perspectives on how to achieve that, how quickly, and how seriously,” Lammy said during an interview with POLITICO in Belgrade.
“There is also an alternative vision, a darker one. That is a position that points to oligarchy, corruption, heavy state control, much more of a police state. There is that vision, and those things are now opposing each other in this part of the world.”
The enormous obstacles Serbia must overcome to join the EU are clearly displayed on the streets of Belgrade. An increasingly authoritarian government led by President Aleksandar Vučić, who recently welcomed Dodik with open arms, is facing a serious test from protests of unprecedented scale in Serbia.
Hundreds of thousands of people have marched against government corruption in protests organized by students following the collapse of a canopy at a newly renovated railway station in Novi Sad, which resulted in the deaths of 16 people in November. Streets are still blocked daily.
The protests have even expanded to oppose the construction of luxury properties proposed by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump. A hotel complex is planned to be built on the site of the bombed former Yugoslav General Staff, a monument to NATO's airstrikes that ended the Kosovo war in 1999. Students connect this plan to other real estate projects they claim are corrupt. Many in the country also feel disgusted that the Trump family is profiting from a site destroyed in a bombing campaign led by Washington.
The decentralized model of student organization means there is no clear leader who could be targeted for the suppression of protests, but authorities have been accused of using illegal sound cannons against demonstrators. Official Belgrade has also stated that Russian intelligence services helped respond to citizens' dissatisfaction, the author describes the situation in Belgrade.
Lammy told POLITICO, "We stand with the people," before mentioning the protests and claims of sound cannon use during his meeting with Vučić on Wednesday (last week) at his presidential palace. The UK Foreign Secretary was there to sign a series of agreements with dual goals – to fight illegal migration and to keep Serbia closer to the West.
But it was clear in a statement to the gathered TV stations that Vučić, a populist standing at 6'6" (198 cm) who has led Serbian politics for over a decade, did not kindly accept the challenges.
“I don’t feel like commenting on protests and demonstrations in the UK because I respect the sovereignty of the United Kingdom,” he said to tightly controlled Serbian media.
Vučić also denied that force or acoustic weapons had been used against protesting citizens and firmly defended Dodik after Lammy mentioned his "unconstitutional" actions in their statements to reporters. (The Serbian government did not respond to interview requests, the author noted.)
The protests are not waving EU flags. Students believe that Brussels has closed its eyes to endemic corruption that they condemn, while the EU tries to win over Vučić and gain access to lithium deposits in Serbia for battery producers of electric vehicles.
Unlike other Balkan countries, Serbia's support for EU membership does not seem convincing, while widespread support for Russia remains. The process could be even more challenging since the country must recognize Kosovo as a condition for accession. Graffiti across Belgrade claim that Kosovo is Serbia. From the central Republic Square, the denial of the Srebrenica genocide of over 8,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995 is visible. Common messages include "fk NATO, fk the EU."
Serbia has quietly allowed its weapons to end up in Ukraine but is one of only two European countries that has not imposed sanctions on Russia. Its leaders advocate for EU membership but also maintain close relations with Moscow and China, deepening economic and military ties with both.
‘The Paradox Is Alive’, Lammy’s words are quoted.
Fault Lines and Warnings in Kosovo
Lammy's visit to the region began 150 miles (240 km) to the south, in Kosovo, where the welcome in the capital Pristina couldn’t have been warmer. The UK, the U.S., and NATO are highly valued there, as they helped Kosovo during the war with Serbia. A generation of children named Tony Blair, Clinton, or Madeleine after the Western leaders who helped the nation win independence is now in their mid-20s.
In an interview with POLITICO in her office, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani, an energetic millennial who has been in high office since 2021, makes it clear that not everything is well in relations with Serbia, which she describes as their "crazy hegemonic neighbor."
Recent flashpoints include the siege of a Serbian Orthodox monastery in the village of Banjska in northern Kosovo in 2023, by armed men in armored vehicles. One police officer and three ethnically Serbian attackers were killed in the firefight, which Kosovo blames on Serbia, while Belgrade disputes the claim.
Then there was an explosion that damaged the energy and water systems on a key canal last December, which Kosovo called a "terrorist attack." Serbia denied involvement and stated that the incident was being used as an excuse to crack down on Serbs in Kosovo.
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, whom Belgrade accuses of repressing Serbs in his country, has long warned that "the threat of a new war" is real, citing increased cooperation between Serbia and what Osmani calls the “axis of evil” – Russia, China, and Iran. Vučić has also repeatedly mentioned the possibility of a new conflict in the region, claiming that Kosovo unfairly treats the Serbian community.
NATO-led troops from 29 countries assigned to Kosovo Forces (KFOR) are crucial for maintaining fragile peace. POLITICO was at the Camp Film City base when British soldiers told Lammy they believe Russia supports Serbian activities in Kosovo, including intelligence operations, confirming the assessment of a senior official in Pristina. The soldiers also monitor political rallies and elections, as well as key infrastructure after the canal explosion.
Osmani argues that Serbia meddled in Kosovo's recent general elections; that the "Serbian-Russian humanitarian center" on the Kosovo border is actually a "Russian spy center"; and that Moscow has tripled its spending on disinformation in the Western Balkans since the invasion of Ukraine.
Osmani insists that America under Trump was a reliable ally but warns that if Putin emerges emboldened from peace talks with Ukraine, under U.S. leadership, the Balkans could become "fertile ground" for the "spillover" of that conflict.
“If these autocrats who want destabilization can do whatever they want... things can escalate very, very quickly in this region,” she says. “So, prevention and deterrence are key, and we must not let Putin have his way. Vučić has danced to Putin’s tune for too long. It’s high time he decides where he wants to take his country.”
Lammy traveled the region with Karen Pierce, the newly appointed UK special envoy to the Western Balkans. Until February, Pierce was the UK Ambassador to Washington, where she was widely praised for her work with both the Biden and Trump administrations. She has a long history in the region, and her appointment is seen as confirmation of "how seriously the United Kingdom takes the Balkans," one European diplomat said.
At the meeting with Osmani, the president pressed Lammy about signing an economic and security agreement that would include bilateral arms purchases and more joint operations between their troops. She also told POLITICO that her country had "officially expressed" its readiness to join the peacekeeping forces that the UK and France are trying to organize for Ukraine – but conditioned this on signing the desired agreement with the UK.
The president also lashed out at “active appeasement” by unnamed parties within the EU, criticizing them for continuing to share money with Serbia despite the tensions. Kosovo officially applied for EU membership in 2022, but five EU member states still do not recognize it, and both Kosovo and Serbia have been told that they must do more on normalizing relations.
She also told Lammy to tell Vučić to “stop attacking his neighbors, very clearly and simply,” although in an interview with POLITICO, Lammy refused to place blame for the siege of Banjska. (Privately, British officials admit there is evidence of Serbia’s involvement.)
‘Slowly Unfolding’
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dodik, the fiery president of the Serb-run entity, has been sentenced to a year in prison and six years of public office ban for defying orders from the international envoy, a position created to prevent the region from slipping back into war. He has since avoided national arrest warrants, and was welcomed by Vučić and Putin in Moscow.
The US and the UK have sanctioned him in recent years, but some want to go further, like Arminka Helić, a refugee from the Yugoslav wars who is now a member of the House of Lords in the UK.
“We’ve imposed certain sanctions, but they haven’t been devastating,” said the former government foreign policy advisor. She also advocated for UK ministers to send troops to the EU’s peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Lammy does not rule out the possibility of new sanctions for Dodik, declining to comment on such measures except to say they are “always kept under control.”
One of the disaster scenarios that Helić predicts is that Dodik, positioning himself as “right of the right” and presenting himself as a victim of a “great left-wing conspiracy,” could succeed in appealing to Trump to recognize the independence of his region in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In one of the smoky Belgrade bars, Helena Ivanov, a researcher at the Henry Jackson Society think tank, warned that the EU could not "afford the loss" of Serbia given the geopolitical circumstances, arguing that it could cause a wave of problems across the region.
“If you go back to the Yugoslav era, if someone had paid more attention to what was happening here in the '80s, I think things could have gone very differently. I think the West woke up too late and insufficiently to the reality of what was happening in Yugoslavia,” she said.
“And I wonder if something very similar could happen right now, not in the sense that the outcome would be the same – that you get a war, no – but that you wake up to a reality where Russian and Chinese influences are so deeply rooted in this country that it’s too little and too late.”
Helić agrees that the West is paying too little attention, attributing it to Russia’s gradual encroachment in the region.
“It’s like a disease because it develops slowly and invisibly. It’s not a cut; it’s like a slow-burning infection and contagion,” she said.
There is the influence of state media – Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as the Russian Orthodox Church linked to the Kremlin. Disinformation campaigns are also being run on social media.
Like Ivanov, Helić believes that the danger could become apparent to foreigners very suddenly, but only when it’s too late.
“It can go from bad to worse overnight because this has been a process of state institution decay since 2006, everything we’ve achieved since the '95 wars,” Helić said. “Russia doesn’t want a stable Balkans because it’s a constant, endless toothache for the West, and Russia is fine with that.”
