site.btaWar in Ukraine Raises Concerns about Crisis in Western Balkans

The Russian invasion in Ukraine increased concerns regarding the stability of the Western Balkans, a region which bears Europe’s freshest battle scars and part of the problems after the wars in the 1990s remain still unsolved.

In his comment in the new package of European assistance to Ukraine, the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borell, warned that the crisis in Ukraine could also spread to other regions like the Western Balkans, Georgia and Moldova.

The EU is concerned with what could happen to the entire region. Russia will not stop in Ukraine. Russian influence could begin operating in neighbouring countries, in Moldova, Georgia, and will also have influence on the Western Balkans, Borell told a news conference after the informal EU foreign ministerial.

He underscored that the EU should be extremely careful about the impact of the Russo-Ukrainian crisis on the Western Balkans and follow how Balkan EU accession candidate countries coordinate their foreign policy with the European one.

In this context, Western Balkan countries have largely joined the European response to the Russian invasion in Ukraine, condemning Moscow and adopting sanctions against it. 

Serbia was the exception. It is considered a traditional Russian ally in the Balkans but is also a EU accession candidate. It declared it supports Ukraine’s territorial integrity but will not introduce sanctions against Moscow. Its decision is also influenced by the positions regarding Kosovo, for neither Moscow, nor Kyiv recognize Kosovo’s independence. 

After Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of the self-proclaimed ‘people’s republics’ of Donetsk and Lugansk, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic did not preclude the possibility of the crisis in Ukraine to spread in Europe and the Balkans in particular. Then again, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani said that in the case of Kosovo Serbia’s aim was what Russia aimed in Ukraine and Georgia, and that Moscow’s predilection for destabilization was not aimed solely against Ukraine, but also at the region of the Balkans.

The situation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which wants to accede to NATO and the EU, is also rather specific. The Croatian and Bosnian members of the Bosnian Presidency, Zeljko Komsic and Sefik Dzaferovic, sharply condemned the Russian invasion in Ukraine, while the Serbian representative, Milorad Dodik, is firmly for the neutrality of Bosnia and Herzegovina and declared that Republika Srpska, the part of the country inhabited mainly by Serbs, will not take a single measure to mar its relations with Russia.

The Bosnian Presidency is a three-member body and decisions in it are made by consensus.

Dodik has been insisting for Republika Srpska to split away and accede to neigbouring Serbia for years. The United States accuse him of actions that may destabilize the region and undermine the Dayton Agreement, which put an end to the war in Bosnia more than 25 years ago.

At the same time, the Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Johann Sattler, just underscored in an interview for the Nezavisne Novine daily that recalled that Bosnia and Herzegovina had an obligation stemming from its EU membership application to align with the EU's foreign policy.

Last week’s EU decision to nearly double its peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and send 500 troops there also indicates the growing concerns of possible disruption of stability in the Balkans.

EUFOR, formally the European Union Force Bosnia and Herzegovina, said the deterioration of the security situation internationally had the potential to enlarge instability in the direction of Bosnia.

The Croatian expert in geopolitics, Prof. Vlatko Cvrtila, commented for N1 TV the consequences of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict for the region. 

What is most worrying is what could potentially happen right in this region, considering that there are countries and political structures very close to Putin and Russia, Cvrtila said. What he had in mind was above all Serbia, but Dodik, too, was shaking Bosnia seriously for the sixth month already, declaring that Republika Srpska was leaving the federal institutions established by the Dayton Agreement, he added. 

At the same time, Janez Jansa warned in an interview for Euroactive that any fall of Kyiv would lead to a ‘domino effect’ in Eastern Europe.