Russia’s influence in the Balkans is rather limited, despite media exaggeration of Moscow’s role in the region. The Kremlin effectively controls a small portion of the Serbian energy sector, as well as a couple of oil refineries in Republika Srpska – one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Russia still has a certain political influence in some former Yugoslav republics, although the region is firmly in the United States and European Union geopolitical orbit.
Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, lost much of its influence not only in the former Soviet states such as Georgia and Ukraine, but in the Balkan countries as well. Bulgaria and Romania, once part of the Kremlin-led Eastern Bloc, joined the EU in 2007, and three years earlier the two former communist nations became NATO member-states. In 2003, Russian peace-keeping troops were ordered by the Kremlin to leave both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. Ever since, most Balkan countries either joined the EU and NATO or have been actively negotiating membership. In spite of that, it is widely believed that Moscow still has a strong influence in most nations that the mass media label as “Western Balkans”. It is worth noting, however, that virtually all of the former Yugoslav republics that are out of the EU are located in the central and southern parts of the Balkan Peninsula, not in the West.
The Balkans, in general, mostly represent fertile soil, characterized by economic stagnation, corruption, weak governance and high unemployment rates on which European, American, Russian, Turkish and Chinese companies can easily put down roots. Russia’s economic influence in the region is concentrated in a small number of strategic business sectors such as energy, banking, metallurgy and real estate. In 2005, the Montenegrin government sold the country’s largest industrial concern (KAP) to Central European Aluminum Company, owned by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. After eight years under CEAC’s management, KAP fell into bankruptcy in October 2013, by which time it had run up debts of around 360 million euros. Russian companies were the biggest investors in the country since 2008, although they were mostly involved in the real-estate industry. However, in 2014, Montenegro joined anti-Russia Western sanctions due to the Kremlin activities in Crimea and the Donbass, but Moscow’s response was very weak. Russia did not ban charter flights to Montenegro, nor did it attempt to prevent its tourists from visiting the Montenegrin coast, which would have severely affected the country’s tourism. Instead, the Kremlin added Montenegro to the list of countries from which it was banning food imports, which was a rather symbolic measure as in 2014 Montenegro’s total export to Russia was worth only 4 million euros. Russia also did nothing to prevent Montenegro from joining NATO in 2017, which is a clear indication that there was a tacit agreement between Moscow and the West over this matter.
After North Macedonia joined NATO in March 2020, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina remained the only two former Yugoslav republics that are still out of the Alliance. That, however, does not mean that Russian influence in those countries is growing. Presently, Russia controls rather small part of the energy sector in Serbia, as in 2008 Russia’s Gazprom Neft, a subsidiary of Gazprom, took a controlling stake in Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS) oil and gas company, a deal worth over $450 million. In Republika Srpska, Russia’s Zarubezhneft controls oil refineries in the towns of Brod and Modrica, although they suffer significant operating loss. When it comes to political influence, the so called Western Balkan countries have been on “European path” for decades, with little or no chance of joining the European Union any time soon. Since the region does not border Russia, and is virtually surrounded by NATO and EU states, any alliance with Russia seems practically impossible. In spite of that, the vast majority of the Western media tend to portray some of the regional countries, primarily Serbia, as “Russia’s rare allies in Europe”. In reality, in 2019 Serbia conducted 13 military exercises with NATO members and only four with Russia. Besides that, Russia’s cultural influence in Serbia is almost non-existent. According to the Serbian Ministry of Education, only one percent of Serbian children attending elementary schools study Russian as their first foreign language, while only 99.662 out of roughly a million in-school population study Russian as their second foreign language. Russian music and cinematography are completely unknown to the wider population, while economic ties are much stronger with the EU and neighboring countries than with the Russian Federation.
As the European Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn once said, the EU might have overestimated Russian and underestimated Chinese influence in the Balkans. Still, in all aspects, the region is dominated by the West, and such a balance of power will unlikely change any time soon.
Image credit: The Presidential Press and Information Office / Wikimedia Commons
