Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo continued to boil over the summer, but a surprise visit by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić to Kosovo this week seems to have eased tensions.
Analysts warn that Russia may still try to find ways to destabilize the crucial region. "Any potential for destabilization has to do with still unresolved issues from the Serbian perspective," said Kosovar Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi. "We have an issue in the Western Balkans that Serbia is not clear about its borders with their neighbors."
Bislimi, the Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration, Development, and Dialogue in the country of roughly 2 million, has also warned that Serbia, like Russia, presumes to have a sphere of influence inside neighboring countries.
"Escalation in Russia offers a fruitful terrain for new escalations," Bislimi said. "As of 1999, the Serbs have created a new narrative [in which Serbs and Russians are brothers that] only have Romania and Ukraine between them."
This has allowed penetration by Russia's economic interests, such as investment and infrastructure developments, including gas stations and energy suppliers across the Balkans. "Russia also has a military and intelligence presence," he said.
According to a June poll from Belgrade-based Demostat, about 51 percent of Serbians would oppose EU membership in a national referendum, with 34 percent in support of it. The same poll found that 40 percent of Serbs selected Russian President Vladimir Putin as their favorite world leader.
"Russia's intention to misuse the territory of Russia for creating tensions with neighboring countries does not necessarily have the goal of dividing the West," Bislimi said. "It may be to deviate the focus from Ukraine."
During the 1990s, the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia led to some of the worst conflicts in Europe between the end of World War II and the start of the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
The two final chapters of that series of conflicts took place in Kosovo and what is today North Macedonia. A NATO intervention in 1999 in support of ethnic Albanian Kosovar insurgents ended Serbia's counter-insurgency campaign. Kosovo declared its independence less than a decade later, in 2008. Today over 100 countries recognize Kosovo's independence. As a spillover from that conflict, a group of ethnically Albanian guerrillas launched a brief conflict in 2001 before a similar NATO intervention. North Macedonia joined NATO in 2020 after agreeing to change its name from simply Macedonia. Kosovo hopes to one day follow a similar path.
Officials in Macedonia seem less concerned that Russian intervention in Balkan affairs is a pressing concern.
"We don't expect it this minute, nor do we expect it to happen," said Naser Nuredini, Minister of Environment and Physical Planning of North Macedonia. "Of course, we all need to be prepared for any such event."
(Additional reporting provided by Virginia Van Zandt)
This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.
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