Putin ally Serbia sets Balkans on fire: on behalf of the Kremlin?

Serbia’s provocations are raising concerns of another war in the Balkans. The unrest is no coincidence: Russia is using its influence to destabilize the region.

They are martial images, taken in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo: hundreds of paramilitaries and police officers goose-stepping. They carry submachine guns in their hands, next to them armored cars roll through the eastern part of the city.

What at first glance looks like an ordinary military parade harbors political explosives: with the march, the men are celebrating the founding day of the so-called Republic of Srpska in 1992 – even though the Bosnian constitutional court had previously banned the march.

Those who marched there before the eyes of the Serbian foreign minister on January 9 belong to the Serb entity in Bosnia. Your event is a maximum provocation for the Bosnian government, as it celebrates a day that is considered the trigger for the Bosnian war, during which mainly Serbs under their leader Radovan Karadžić committed numerous massacres of Muslim Bosnians.

The day and the march show that things are seething in the Balkans. Once again. Serbia is igniting in the region – and is apparently getting backing from Moscow. In the end, one person in particular benefits from the unrest: Vladimir Putin.

The Western Balkans has been a politically extremely difficult region for years. Serbia is causing unrest not only in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in Kosovo. The situation there almost escalated at the end of December when citizens of Serbian origin resisted the state and set up roadblocks – with the friendly support of the Serbian government. This brought together military equipment near the neighboring country, sent the army chief to the border and warned of an “armed conflict”. Read more about it here.

This is not just a conflict between two hostile neighboring countries. Rather, it seems as if the EU accession candidate Serbia is currently deliberately relying on provocation in the Balkans – with the backing of Moscow.

That would hardly be surprising. Serbia has been pursuing a pendulum policy between the European Union and Russia not only since Russia’s attack on Ukraine. On the one hand, the country is a candidate for EU membership, the EU is its most important trading partner, with Serbia voting at the United Nations to condemn Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

On the other hand, Serbia is ideologically much closer to the Kremlin and has close economic ties. For example, President Alexander Vučić refused to join the sanctions against Russia – much to the anger of the EU.

“Vučić is trying to work with the major power blocs in the northern hemisphere, i.e. the West, China and Russia, and in doing so to give his country an importance that it actually has neither politically nor economically,” says Oliver Jens Schmitt, a historian of Eastern Europe at the University of Vienna and Director of Balkan Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

In this context, the expert also sees the most recent provocations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Kosovo, which he describes as “interfering manoeuvres”. “Vučić is clearly turning the spiral of escalation,” says Schmitt. To do this, he specifically uses the Serb population in neighboring countries, such as recently in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. “The majority of this diaspora is a fatal element because it supports Serbian ultra-nationalism, including violently, as riots in Vienna have repeatedly shown.”