With the resurrection of the Serbian world, evil awakens over the Balkans: Putin's shadow over Banja Luka would keep Brussels in its sights!

Written by: Rasim Belko @rasimbelko

The Serbian world is born. Truly it is born. It is certain that this is how the all-Serbian "Easter Assembly" organized by the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić, the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church Porfirije, and the President of the BiH entity RS Milorad Dodik will begin.

Three days after Easter, on May 5 and 6, the holding of the "great Easter assembly of Serbia and the RS" is planned, according to the official announcement, which deliberately omitted the SPC as one of the main drivers of the Russian world axis in the Western Balkans. And there is no doubt, and we have already received announcements from various parts of the world, that in the months following the Easter assembly we will witness an aggressive attempt to create tensions that will push the region towards new armed conflicts. All under the banner of the Serbian world and with the blessing of Vladimir Putin.

When Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Putin was preparing a torch to set the Western Balkans ablaze, many of us thought he was just diverting attention to his war with Russia. However, warnings have begun to pile up like some kind of announcement of evil.

That Russia's influence is growing and that Putin's plan lies behind it all was warned by the European Parliament back in June 2022: "The rise of ethnic tensions, high unemployment, the departure of young people and unstable constitutional arrangements in countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina create an opportunity for Russia to exploit its already significant influence in the region." After this report, more than a year later came Zelenskyy's warning, and in the meantime we listened to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg emphasizing hotspots such as Moldova, BiH and Kosovo.

The head of the Romanian Armed Forces, Georgita Vlad, said in one interview that he is certain that Putin's policy will escalate into Moldova and the Western Balkans. Similar warnings were sent by numerous analysts from Western Europe and the USA, who mostly called for a reaction before the problem occurs.

The Russian threat in the Western Balkans is evident, and to anyone who has seriously engaged in analyzing relations in the post-Yugoslav region, it is clear who (or what) the levers of power in Russia's reins are. Aleksandar Vučić has been the absolute ruler of Serbia for over a decade. In the first two-thirds of that rule, while promising change to Western sponsors, primarily Germany and the USA, he built a large scaffold for Russian influence in the Western Balkans. So large that at a certain point even the NATO alliance entered a phase of concern.

And then Vučić realized he could play both sides, deceiving Western leaders and diplomats into believing he had undergone a reincarnation. And it was not his power of lying according to the matrix of Dobrica Ćosić that was decisive; rather, it was the complete blindness of the Western political and diplomatic corps that made Vučić the most powerful regional player.

Vučić used this, with the help of the Kremlin and the SPC, to strengthen the already developed network of Serbian-Russian influence to a level where he could rival the West in regional circumstances. He enabled Milorad Dodik absolute power over 49 percent of BiH territory, a secure role in government at the BiH level, and a direct line to Putin. Parallel to this, he continuously undermined the foundations of security in Kosovo. Lost in translation, the West allowed him to take control of Montenegro, a NATO member.

Today, Belgrade - Podgorica - Banja Luka are the branches of an axis of hegemonic evil, absolutely aware that it is close to achieving the goals for which the region burned in the 1990s. And the dream of the triangle controlled by Vučić is equivalent to the interest dream of Vladimir Putin and the unfulfilled desires of the Serbian and Russian Orthodox Churches.

It is completely clear that over the Western Balkans, the evil of Orthodox imperialism has loomed, which is no longer smoldering, but openly quivers, ready to ignite new conflicts. And this evil will certainly not be stopped by the illusion that is being served to us these days through the story of some negotiations with the European Union.

Because the mistake the West made in Bosnia, Kosovo and Montenegro cannot be corrected even if we were to join the European Union tomorrow. This was best confirmed by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, in his invitation letter to the Council members for this week's summit.

"Europe has not invested enough in its security and defense for decades. Now that we are faced with the greatest security threat since World War II, it is high time we take radical and concrete steps to be defensively ready and put the EU economy on a 'war footing'," Michel states. Therefore, the European Union is currently unable to defend itself, and we are supposed to believe that it will defend us just because we might have gotten the opportunity to negotiate.

Undoubtedly, the political mistakes of the West led by America in the Western Balkans from 1992 to 2022 have come due, and the price could be much higher than what Washington (perhaps) sees.

Edward Joseph, an American professor with whom I rarely agree, gave a precise diagnosis on January 31 in an interview with Voice of America (VOA) that could prevent the resurrection of the Serbian world from setting the Western Balkans ablaze.

"We hold the cards, the West, the United States, the EU, NATO. We need to use them properly and stop allowing Aleksandar Vučić's manipulations through his charade of interest in joining the EU," Joseph said then.

The process of reviving the dream of creating a Serbian world (the 1990s dream of a Greater Serbia) has also resurrected, and it has not proceeded invisibly. On the contrary, the accelerated and visible process of the resurrection of the Serbian world has been greatly contributed to by the handicapped understandings of the Western Balkans in Washington and Brussels.

If, in the volatile post-Yugoslav space with many unresolved issues, the West does not turn its policy in a completely opposite direction, the moment is not far when, alongside the Ukrainian front, it will have an open (and for Europe more dangerous) front in the Western Balkans.

And that is a diagnosis that must be applied in a short time.

Otherwise, it is certain that what Ivana Stradner and Mark Montgomery from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington state in an analysis for The Wall Street Journal will happen: that "Russia will rely on Serbia to foment violence and instability, betting that NATO will falter."

If the Russian world comes through the Serbian one to Banja Luka, then all European capitals are within short range of the Siberian bear. At that moment, a game would begin whose consequences and winner no rational person could predict!