Russian Political Warfare in the Balkans: Next Conflict Brewing in Europe

Russ­ian polit­i­cal war­fare in the Balka­ns is esca­lat­ing ten­sions across south­east­ern Europe as Moscow seeks region­al lever­age while Ukraine fights for sur­vival. On June 17, 2025, the For­eign Pol­i­cy Research Insti­tute pub­lished analy­sis by Ivana Strad­ner and Peter LaBelle warn­ing that Putin’s alliance with Ser­bian Pres­i­dent Alek­san­dar Vučić aims to desta­bi­lize frag­ile Balkan states and embar­rass NATO through infor­ma­tion war­fare rather than tra­di­tion­al mil­i­tary force. The arti­cle begins:

Since the full-scale Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia’s involve­ment in East­ern Europe has gar­nered greater atten­tion. Unlike the bru­tal ter­ri­to­r­i­al con­quest and destruc­tion seen in Ukraine, Russia’s meth­ods in south­east­ern Europe are more sub­tle, using infor­ma­tion and psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare tech­niques rather than tra­di­tion­al mil­i­tary pow­er. In the west­ern Balka­ns, Rus­sia has cul­ti­vat­ed an alliance with the author­i­tar­i­an pres­i­dent of Ser­bia, Alek­san­dar Vučić, aimed at desta­bi­liz­ing the region’s frag­ile states and embar­rass­ing or dis­tract­ing NATO and the West. Provoca­tive actions by Ser­bia, Russia’s main ally in the region, have affect­ed coun­tries across the Balka­ns. Ser­bia has repeat­ed­ly moved sol­diers to the bor­ders of Koso­vo, caus­ing mul­ti­ple war scares. All this has helped esca­late eth­nic ten­sions with­in Koso­vo, where eth­nic Serbs have boy­cotted local elec­tions and riot­ed against eth­nic Alban­ian may­ors. Riots by eth­nic Serbs in Koso­vo also injured more than 90 NATO peace­keep­ers in 2023. Rus­sia has con­tributed to height­en­ing ten­sions over Koso­vo, with For­eign Min­is­ter Sergei Lavrov threat­en­ing that the West was to blame for “a major explo­sive sit­u­a­tion … brew­ing in the heart of Europe.”

Read more: https://www.fpri.org/article/2025/06/will-russian-political-warfare-operations-in-the-balkans-fuel-its-next-war/

Key Points

• Ser­bia repeat­ed­ly moved sol­diers to Koso­vo bor­ders caus­ing war scares, while eth­nic Serbs riot­ed against Alban­ian may­ors and injured over 90 NATO peace­keep­ers in 2023.
• Bosn­ian Serb leader Milo­rad Dodik, backed by Putin, enact­ed laws remov­ing Repub­li­ka Srp­s­ka from fed­er­al insti­tu­tions and pro­posed inde­pen­dence ref­er­en­dum despite con­sti­tu­tion­al court conviction.
• Russ­ian state media Sput­nik and RT oper­ate freely in Ser­bia, spread­ing lies that Ukraine attacked Rus­sia and con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about US “bio­labs” to sup­port Vučić against protesters.
• The analy­sis reveals Ser­bia serves as sanc­tions-bust­ing con­duit, with com­pa­nies send­ing over $71 mil­lion to Rus­sia since Feb­ru­ary 2022, while issu­ing pass­ports to Krem­lin-linked Russians.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.