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Introduction

As Russian President Vladimir Putin continues his renewed campaign for global influence, Russia increasingly is asserting itself in the Balkans, hoping to slow down the region’s integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions and tarnish the image of Western-style democracy in Southeastern Europe.

Moscow eagerly plays up shared cultural ties and supports Russian commercial efforts to deepen economic and trade relations in key strategic sectors—like energy, banking, and real estate—to create Balkan political and economic dependence. Russian influence operations foster people-to-people connections, with the goal of creating Russian-friendly local constituencies and levers of influence that could allow Moscow to inhibit further integration into Western economic, political, or security structures. To buttress these efforts, Russia also seeks to exacerbate political and social fissures in several Balkan countries, including providing financial and public relations support for far-right groups.

Moscow’s willingness and ability to aggravate and prolong political instability in select Balkan countries appears geared toward undermining, or at least delaying, their prospects for integration into the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). As xenophobia and populism upend political systems in European countries with far stronger institutions, the Kremlin’s cultivation of far-right groups and authoritarian-style politicians in the Balkans is worrying. Russia’s efforts will fuel democratic backsliding and political polarization—both of which complicate Balkan states’ EU and NATO prospects.

For Russia, the Balkans hold significant historic, cultural, and religious connections—shared ties that are actively propagated, and at times exaggerated, by Russian public diplomacy efforts and media narratives. The region’s geostrategic location between the Black and Mediterranean Seas, as well as its proximity to the Middle East, is also important to Moscow. The Black Sea provides Russia with access to warm-water ports—the quest for which has been a historic driver of Russian diplomatic and military activity in Southeastern Europe. And as one of the last regions of Europe—before the former Soviet space—that has not yet been fully integrated into Euro-Atlantic structures, the Balkans present an obvious target for Russian influence operations that are geared toward slowing down and even preventing EU or NATO enlargement. By bogging down expansion in the Balkans, Moscow hopes to prevent renewed discussion about membership for Georgia, Ukraine, or any other former Soviet state.

The Kremlin’s influence campaign in the Balkans also helps steer Western focus away from more disturbing actions elsewhere—Russia’s military buildup in the Sea of Azov and subsequent aggression in the Kerch Strait, the worsening war conditions in eastern Ukraine, South Ossetia’s moving boundary line, and Moscow’s subtle influence operations targeting post–Velvet Revolution Armenia. For Russia, the Balkans are a tool used to deflect attention from other activities and influence broader European security and economic institutions.

However, Moscow does not necessarily seek, nor would it be able, to assert itself as the preeminent power in Southeastern Europe, where it competes for influence not only with the West but also with China, Turkey, and even Persian Gulf states—all of which are active in the region. Russian government officials visit the Balkans frequently, promising increased trade and investment, yet Russia produces little of what the region needs beyond energy, does not manufacture consumer goods that most Balkan shoppers want, and often fails to deliver on its promises of loans or investment.

Furthermore, Russian hard power frequently undercuts its soft power efforts. The annexation of Crimea and war in eastern Ukraine refocused NATO toward Russian threats in Europe and reinvigorated several Balkan countries’ stalled Euro-Atlantic integration prospects. Russian overreach in the Balkans—from the allegedly Russian-backed coup attempt in Montenegro to the Kremlin’s efforts to stoke nationalist opposition to the Greek-Macedonian name dispute deal—has alienated political elites in countries where Russia traditionally has enjoyed warm ties.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence warned of Russia’s influence operations and covert efforts in the Balkans and highlighted U.S. resolve to support Balkan autonomy at the 2017 Adriatic Charter Summit in Montenegro, saying that:

Russia continues to seek to redraw international borders by force. And here, in the Western Balkans, Russia has worked to destabilize the region, undermine your democracies, and divide you from each other and from the rest of Europe. Russia’s intentions were laid bare over the past year when Moscow-backed agents sought to disrupt Montenegro’s elections, attack your parliament and even attempt to assassinate your Prime Minister to dissuade the Montenegrin people from entering our NATO Alliance. President Trump has called clearly on Russia to “cease its destabilizing activities.” And I can assure you: The United States of America rejects any attempt to use force, threats, or intimidation in this region or beyond. The Western Balkans have the right to decide your own future, and that is your right alone.

Balkan leaders—both NATO members and aspirants—welcomed his visit and the strong statement of American support. A year later, however, U.S. President Donald Trump questioned whether U.S. troops should defend Montenegro, by then NATO’s newest member. The president’s statement highlighted his personal disdain for the alliance and conveyed wavering U.S. commitment to the Balkans, where American involvement has been key to stabilization efforts since the 1990s. This disconnect between the president and his national security team—in addition to the U.S. public’s lack of interest in the Balkans and concerns among Trump’s political base about expansive U.S. foreign policy commitments to distant regions of the world—underscores inconsistencies in U.S. policy and highlights the lack of clear leadership in a region where Russia’s recent activity risks exacerbating political and social instability.

The EU, by contrast, has demonstrated greater focus on the Balkans with its 2018 enhanced strategy for the region. While this updated plan includes the ambitious goal of two new Balkan EU members by 2025, years of passive engagement and the slow pace of the European project have spurred growing frustration in Balkan states. Many Europeans remain wary of expanding into the Balkans, given the bevy of internal problems facing the EU and the fact that several member states from Central and Eastern Europe have regressed democratically or struggle with continued corruption and rule of law shortfalls. Despite the new strategy, it remains unclear whether Europe is willing or able to devote the financial and human resources required to help the Balkan’s remaining EU aspirants institute the wide-reaching reforms required for membership.

This failure, by both the United States and the EU, to articulate a coherent and consistent approach to the region has created ample space for Russian interference in the Balkans.

Russian Foreign Policy Under Putin

Until the conflict in Ukraine, Western policymakers paid scant attention to Russia’s efforts to expand its political, economic, and military influence outside of the former Soviet space. Russia’s internal political and economic challenges limited its ability to project power and influence beyond its immediate neighborhood, while the Kremlin’s stated goal of integrating with the West reduced perceptions of Russia as a threat.

Vladimir Putin’s return to the Russian presidency in 2012 and the deterioration of relations between Russia and the West over Ukraine have led to a more activist Russian foreign policy. Russia now relies on a growing array of diplomatic, military, intelligence, underworld, religious, cultural, cyber, and economic tools to influence political and economic decisionmaking and shape popular attitudes across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. These tools—described in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s “The Return of Global Russia: An Analytical Framework”—are used to advance Russian political, commercial, and financial interests in key parts of the world, as Russian support for far-right and far-left populism across the Euro-Atlantic space upends political norms and strains key institutions. Moscow hopes to complicate Western states’ ability to articulate cohesive policies and to undermine the cohesion of the transatlantic alliance.

The Kremlin highlights its increased global activity and international clout on state television and through other forms of propaganda to convey to the Russian public and target populations across the world the notion that Russia under Putin’s leadership has returned to great power status. The downsides of Russia’s activist foreign policy—the death of soldiers or mercenaries in foreign wars, the alienation of some of Russia’s closest partners, or the country’s weakened position vis-à-vis China—are rarely covered in Russian or Russian-friendly regional media. Instead, the Kremlin’s active propaganda machine on its overseas engagements works to enhance Putin’s domestic political base and global standing at a time when Russia faces international sanctions, geopolitical isolation from its traditional partners in the West, and growing social discontent at home.

Russia’s increased activity in the Balkans is part of this new foreign policy approach, although Russian involvement there is far from new. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, post-Soviet Russia secured a small role for itself in the Balkans by using its clout in the United Nations (UN) to stand up for Serbia during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Yet the 1999 NATO bombing campaign during the Kosovo war and Russia’s subsequent limited role in the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) reinforced Russia’s relatively weak hand¹—a perception that the Kremlin has been trying to change.

Russian threats and influence operations were not NATO’s main focus in the Balkans until 2014. Before then, the West saw NATO as a stabilizing force in a region that had been rocked repeatedly by political instability and violence with disastrous results for European security. NATO’s goal in the Balkans is to ensure it remains politically and socially stable, and to prevent the region from again becoming a hotbed of ethnic, religious, or extremist violence. The United States and its European allies have supported the Balkans’ integration into Euro-Atlantic structures. Western powers have used the possibility of NATO or EU membership as an incentive for transitioning Balkan states to improve the rule of law, enhance civilian control of the military, and increase the political accountability of governments and politicians to their people. The war in Afghanistan gave some Balkan states the opportunity to put their partnership with the West into high gear, leading to NATO membership for Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, and Slovenia by 2009. Membership prospects for remaining Balkan states have diminished, but Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine prompted NATO and the EU to reengage with the region and prioritize countering Russian malign influence.

The collapse of East-West relations over Ukraine, however, has bled into the Balkans, transforming the geopolitics of the region into a zero-sum game. This has created problems for the region’s leaders. Before 2014, most tried to balance their country’s foreign policy between Russia and the West, because many Balkan states are internally divided between liberal elements that look to Europe and conservative elements that are more receptive to Russia. This balancing act has become much more difficult since the annexation of Crimea.

Russia’s Toolkit in the Balkans

Economics, Energy, and Investment

Energy is the primary economic tool of Russian influence in the region. Moscow’s proven ability to transform energy into a diplomatic tool reflects the dominant role hydrocarbons play in the Russian economy. Moscow has long hoped to reduce its reliance on Ukraine as a transit state for gas exports by utilizing Southeastern Europe instead, while making several midsize European countries dependent on Russian gas.

Russia’s most ambitious project was the South Stream gas pipeline, which was to stretch from Russia across the Black Sea into Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Serbia, Slovenia, and Austria. Proposed in 2007, South Stream was the hallmark of Russian energy diplomacy, but it failed—in part, because it was more of a geopolitical project than a commercial one. The pipeline was not economically viable, experienced long-delays, and ultimately was deemed in violation of the EU’s Third Energy Package, which mandated increased competition within Europe’s gas and electricity markets. These regulations hampered South Stream’s potential profitability and its ability to raise financing. After Crimea’s annexation and the imposition of sanctions on Russia made financing even harder, South Stream was shelved and was later replaced by Turkstream, another ambitious gas pipeline across the Black Sea from Russia to Turkey. This, too, is a geopolitical project, highlighting the growing ties between Ankara and Moscow. Moscow continues to tout the possibility of involving other Balkan states in Turkstream through pipeline spurs—Bulgaria and Serbia, in particular, remain receptive to this idea.  

Beyond pipelines, Russian companies have had more luck penetrating energy markets with less ambitious projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter Bosnia), Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia, where Russian firms have gained stakes in or control of electricity generation, nuclear power projects, refineries, and gasoline sales. In 2008, Russia’s Gazprom Neft, a subsidiary of Gazprom, took a controlling stake in Serbia’s Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS) oil and gas company, a deal worth over $450 million, and committed to invest at least $600 million more in the company. Critics at the time claimed the price was far too low and that Belgrade was paying back Moscow for Russian diplomatic support over Kosovo, which declared independence earlier that year. Russia’s willingness to block UN recognition of Kosovo and to provide diplomatic backing for Serbia in other international organizations appears to have facilitated Russian energy companies’ entry into Serbia’s energy sector, giving Moscow greater leverage.

Through its investment in NIS, Gazprom Neft gained assets elsewhere in the region, including subsidiary enterprises—gas stations, storage facilities, drilling and exploratory rights, and representative offices—in Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, and Romania. These facilities give Russian commercial entities a visible presence throughout the broader region and create affinities in provincial communities where Russian entities own—either directly or indirectly—stakes in important local employers.

Russia also expanded its hold on the Serbian energy sector with indirect investments channeled through Russian-owned companies operating in the EU—vehicles that Russian commercial entities frequently use to invest in the Balkans under the radar. Russian energy investment conveys Russian influence and helps build soft power, even if an investment is never fully realized. Russian investments in Bosnia, for example, are channeled through the Republika Srpska (RS), the Serb-dominated entity through which Moscow tries to influence Bosnia’s political trajectory. Investments there have made Russia the fifth-largest investor in Bosnia. Yet, not all of Russia’s pledged investments are implemented or profitable. Russian oligarch Rashid Sardarov pledged to invest 800 million euros in the Republika Srpska in 2011 and his Cyprus offshore holding company controls at least five energy companies in the RS, but one of his promised thermal power plants, originally scheduled to open in 2017, appears delayed indefinitely. Russia’s Zarubezhneft controls oil refineries in the Republika Srpska towns of Brod and Modriča, Russia’s largest realized investment in Bosnia. Although these refineries have cost investors around $60 million since 2016, they continue to operate. This suggests that economic profit is less important than leverage over the RS. These investments keep Bosnian Serb refinery workers employed, build goodwill toward Russia, and allow the Republika Srpska leadership to highlight its partnership with Moscow.

Beyond energy, Russia is often presented in the region as the financial lifeline for the Bosnian Serb entity. Senior Russian officials and former Republika Srpska president Milorad Dodik—now the Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency—have held multiple rounds of high-profile negotiations. Russia has pledged several loans to prop up the Republika Srpska’s state budget—according to Dodik, Russia promised at least $625 million in 2014—but there is little evidence that Moscow has in fact delivered the money to Banja Luka. Dodik readily admits this. Yet, perception matters more than reality. From Moscow’s point of view, these pledges help keep Dodik in place as a lever inside Bosnia. And after the imposition of Western sanctions for pushing forward a 2016 referendum in defiance of the Bosnian Constitutional Court, Dodik has few options besides Russia.

Russia has also invested in other sectors across the region: banking, retail, real estate, and tourism. In 2012, Russia’s state-owned Sberbank purchased Volksbank International, formerly the Eastern European subsidiary of an Austrian banking group, now called “Sberbank Europe.” The acquisition gave the Russian bank a relatively large retail and commercial banking presence in Southeastern Europe, with assets in Bosnia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Sberbank’s purchase of Volksbank International also highlights how Russia’s economic presence in the Balkans is channeled indirectly either through European corporate subsidiaries or even less transparent offshore means. Sberbank’s corporate lending activities over time have transformed it into one of the largest creditors in the region. Its loans to Croatia’s Agrokor food group, one of the largest private companies in Southeastern Europe with over 50,000 employees, are notable given Agrokor’s recent bankruptcy protection filing. As part of a debt-restructuring deal, Sberbank and Russian state-owned VTB Bank are poised to gain close to a controlling stake of the new company, with Sberbank gaining direct control of several Agrokor subsidiaries. Due to Agrokor’s size and its links to Balkan food supply chains, farmers, restaurants, retail, and other fields, the restructuring deal could enhance Russian commercial clout in multiple sectors from hospitality to agriculture across several Balkan states. It also underscores Russia’s growing economic interests in Croatia—a member of both NATO and EU—which include a recent deal to supply the country with 1 billion cubic meters of gas each year. Whether Russia’s growing economic footprint will translate into broader political influence

is unclear, particularly after a Sberbank executive claimed in January 2019 that the Russian bank intends to sell its stake in the Croatian company later in the year. Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, however, indicated that he had no knowledge of any such plans.

Russian entities enjoy influence in several Balkan countries’ real estate and tourism markets, particularly in Montenegro and Bulgaria. Russia’s Novaya Gazeta claimed in 2012 that Russian citizens own about 40 percent of real estate in Montenegro, particularly along the Adriatic coast. Visa liberalization, which gave noncitizen landowners visa-free access to the country for up to a year, led to a spike in Russian visitors and potential investors to the country. By 2016, roughly one-third of all foreign companies registered and operating in Montenegro were Russian owned, making it the Balkan country with the greatest Russian investment. Actual Russian investment in Montenegro may even be higher, given the large presence of offshore investments. Similarly, Bulgaria has also become a top destination for Russian tourists, with the country capitalizing on its proximity to Russia, Black Sea coastline, and cultural and religious ties. Bulgaria’s tourism minister claimed during a 2018 trip to Russia that over 400,000 Russian citizens own second homes in the country, and the Bulgarian National Bank estimates that Russian investment into the Bulgarian real estate sector has exceeded 1 billion euros. Bulgaria is attractive to Russian real estate investors because of its relatively easy visa procedures for foreign owners of Bulgarian property and the eventual ability to obtain a residency permit in an EU state—an appealing option for middle-class Russians who are priced out of more expensive EU countries. In addition to the financial flows, tourism and real estate also bolster Russian soft power efforts by facilitating people-to-people connections and making key Adriatic and Black Sea resort towns dependent on Russian visitors.

Information Space: Propaganda, Digital Space, and Cyber

Moscow amplifies its commercial presence and links to the region through repeated high-level visits, robust information campaigns, and partnerships with local media outlets, bloggers, and politicians who push Russian-friendly news stories or anti-Western narratives. Russian corporate sponsorship of football teams, charity events, schools, athletic associations, and Russian language or cultural associations also enhances goodwill among target populations. These soft power tools emanating from the private sector constitute a large part of Russia’s public diplomacy to the region, complementing more formal Russian state outreach through embassies, cultural centers, friendship societies, the church, and honorary consuls.

Russian-friendly or Moscow-supported media in the region eagerly highlight local resentments toward Brussels, Washington, or Balkan politicians who push their countries too far westward. These narratives generally 主题