Russia's Strategic Plans Failing in Balkans, IISS Says

Russia has been making a concerted bid to create four neutral or pro-Russian states in the Western Balkans - but the results have been mixed, according to the London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, IISS.

Dismissing claims made in the UK and Western media that "war is brewing again" in the Balkans, the think tank says the bigger danger is concerted Russian penetration, aimed at creating a bloc of four neutral or friendly states in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Macedonia.

In pursuit of this goal, the IISS says, Moscow has set up a slew of pro-Russian media and other organisations in the region - 109 in Serbia alone and at least 30 in Macedonia - including media outlets and so-called "friendship" associations, as well as fomenting links with parties in Serbia, Macedonia's former ruling VMRO DPMNE party and the opposition Democratic Front in Montenegro.

Russia's "main tools of influence" in the Balkans, it adds, include "websites promoting Russia and glorifying Putin and Russian military prowess", which echo the official line of RT and Sputnik and whose stories routinely "claim that the West and NATO are trembling before the might of Russia, that the EU is on the brink of collapse or that NATO or some other Western entity is behind an imminent Albanian military drive to start a new war and create a Greater Albania".

However, IISS said Russia's Balkan campaign had achieved only mixed results, starting with a major setback in Macedonia, where the Moscow-backed VMRO DPMNE party has been forced to cede power to the Social Democrats, and Montenegro's accession to NATO, despite furious Kremlin opposition.

As a result of the latter, almost "the entire northern shore of the Mediterranean, from...