Russia’s Failed War Has Created an Opening in the Balkans

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic—whose country is one of Russia’s closest allies in Europe—recently made a surprisingly strong statement in support of Ukraine. “We said from the beginning that we cannot support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” he said, adding that “for us, Crimea is Ukraine, Donbas is Ukraine—it will remain so.” Many experts in the West quickly concluded that Serbia had seen the writing on the wall and was cutting ties with Russia amid the latter’s failing war in Ukraine and increasingly isolated pariah status. Nobody likes a loser.

This Western hope, however, couldn’t be more misguided. Vucic’s statement is merely a continuation of Belgrade’s balancing strategy between Russia and the West. To pursue relations with each, it adjusts its relationships to suit its interests. In this case, Vucic’s apparent pivot was all about Kosovo’s right to independence, which Belgrade firmly rejects. At the same time, however, the fact remains that an isolated and weakened Russia losing in Ukraine will be a bad ally for Serbia. The West would do well to remind Serbs of this fundamental geopolitical shift.

The logic behind Vucic’s statement is simple: In Serbia’s view, its territorial integrity was illegally violated by Kosovo’s unilateral 2008 declaration of independence, which is recognized by roughly half of the world’s countries. By that logic, defending Ukraine’s right to control all of its territory is another way of saying that Serbia should do the same. For Vucic, Crimea, Donbas, and Kosovo are parallel cases of dismemberment.

Vucic has made similar statements in the past. In 2019, he explained that “Belgrade cannot yet formally recognize Crimea as Russia’s territory, since that would jeopardize the resolution of the Kosovo status issue.” Serbia also refused to recognize the results of Russia’s pseudo-referendums in the Ukrainian occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. In his rejection of the referendum results in September 2022, Vucic cited the United Nations Charter and noted that Serbia “supports the territorial integrity of all U.N. member states, including also the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

Kosovo defines the limit of Serbian support for Russia. Indeed, Serbia voted last March in favor of the U.N. resolution to condemn Russia’s aggression, with Serbian U.N. Permanent Representative Nemanja Stevanovic emphasizing that his country was “committed to observing the principles of territorial integrity and political independence of states.” Serbia’s U.N. vote was part of Vucic’s pragmatic balancing act. Since the resolution did not mention sanctions and was thus only symbolic, Serbia’s vote represented a low-stakes opportunity to give it a slight boost in the eyes of Western leaders without jeopardizing Belgrade’s relations with Moscow in any substantial way.

Serbia also views the U.N. resolution as a mechanism to condemn NATO’s 1999 intervention in what then remained of the former Yugoslavia. In his address to the U.N. General Assembly, Stevanovic spoke of what he saw as a double standard applying to Ukraine and Serbia. “This is not the first war and the first conflict and the first attack on the territory of modern Europe,” claiming that “just as Russia violated the territorial integrity of Ukraine, so the Western powers attacked Serbia, which did not attack anyone, violated its territorial integrity, and then … recognized Kosovo.”

For Vucic, the implications of the war in Ukraine for the Kosovo question are more important than the risk of losing some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trust.

The Kremlin, in turn, sees Kosovo’s independence as a precedent for annexation—and a way to call out the West for hypocrisy. In September 2022, Russian U.N. Permanent Representative Vasily Nebenzya referred to Kosovo to justify Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territories, which he framed as a “right for self-determination.” Russia is wrong to consider Kosovo a precedent for various reasons, not least because the International Court of Justice considers Kosovo a sui generis case, meaning that it has its own unique set of circumstances and cannot be a model for other cases.

Lest anyone harbors any hopes of an impending Belgrade-Moscow split: Although Serbia opposes Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory, it remains a steadfast Russian ally. Russian television stations RT and Sputnik disseminate propaganda through their Serbian subsidiaries, and Vucic allows his domestic propaganda machine to parrot much of the Kremlin’s stance on Ukraine. Serbian media reflects a broad array of pro-Kremlin messaging, varying from portrayals of Ukrainians as Nazis to false claims that Ukraine attacked Russia first.

In recent months, tensions between Serbia and Kosovo have heightened, following Kosovo’s legislation requiring Serbs in Kosovo to register for Kosovar license plates and documents. In late December 2022, Serbia placed its troops on high alert, and Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic described the two countries as “on the brink of armed conflict.” Throughout this standoff, Belgrade repeatedly thanked Russia for its “support for Serbia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty” as well as stressed that this is why Serbia refuses to support economic sanctions against Russia.

The more interesting lesson is that Belgrade and Moscow’s partnership is not due to some deep historical bond or Slavic brotherhood, as some people contend, but rather is strategic and transactional. They support each other only to the extent that it serves their separate agendas.

To Serbs, the West should ceaselessly emphasize Russia’s international isolation, military failures in Ukraine, and much-diminished power as an ally.

Serbia’s position is complicated by the fact that it still relies heavily on Russia for military equipment and training while Russia wields strong regional influence stemming from ties to the Serbian Orthodox Church and extensive Russian information operations. Vucic risks steep consequences if he were to truly anger Russia.

Indeed, Vucic’s recent statements against Russia’s actions in Ukraine have fueled a backlash against him. The acting head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin, wrote on Telegram that he is “sure Vucic is under pressure” to side with the West. In a similar vein, a Russian State Duma deputy from Crimea, Mikhail Sheremet, claimed Vucic faces “colossal pressure from Western countries.” A Russian senator from Crimea, Ekaterina Altabaeva, sharply criticized Vucic, lamenting how “it is very bitter when today’s realities force a person to abandon historical traditions.” She maintained that “historical ties between Serbia and Russia … will prevail over all political, opportunistic considerations.”

That remains to be seen. In the meantime, Ukraine and the West should not be fooled by Vucic’s rhetoric. He is a rational actor whose principal goal is to remain in power. But given growing tension between Vucic and the Kremlin, the West has an opportunity to exploit their differences to weaken both countries’ regional influence.

For one, the West should start an information offensive against Putin on social and other media platforms in the Balkans, primarily emphasizing Russia’s untrustworthiness as an ally.

In its information operations, the West can leverage Vucic’s current openness toward the West and involve him in efforts to weaken Russia’s regional influence. In a phone call this week between Vucic and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the two reaffirmed Serbia’s willingness to cooperate with the European Union and emphasized Vucic’s commitment toward regional stability and peace. Since Vucic fully controls his country’s media, he can easily spin information any way he likes. This means Vucic has the power to shift the tone of Serbia’s public conversation to support normalizing relations with Kosovo without any fear that Serbian nationalist groups will retaliate. In this case, Vucic’s consolidated power could actually be an asset in the mission to undermine and deter Russia in the Balkans.

Western information operations should also target far-right Serbian nationalists. Their support for Putin stems from his affirmation of their belief that Kosovo is the heart of the Serbian motherland. The West can use strategic messaging to show these people that the relationship between Serbia and Russia is purely transactional and Russian brotherhood is nothing more than a myth.

The truth is that Russia is using Kosovo for its own strategic purposes. Information operations could remind nationalists that Russia’s support for Serbia has been flaky. Russia supported Western sanctions against Serbia in the 1990s and did not help Serbia militarily during NATO’s 1999 intervention. Although Russia initially joined the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, Russia abandoned it in 2003, throwing its supposed Slavic brothers under the bus.

Perhaps most importantly, the West should ceaselessly emphasize Russia’s international isolation, military failures in Ukraine, and much-diminished power as an ally. Russia is fast losing influence on its periphery—whether in Central Asia, the Caucasus, or the Balkans—and it is in no position to help Serbia, either militarily or economically. Exhibit A is Armenia, a nominal Russian ally left helpless by its big brother after Turkish-backed Azerbaijan occupied parts of its territory last year. Make sure that all Serbs know that they should not hitch their wagon to a declining, unreliable star./Foreignpolicy/