[…] almost uniformly, the intelligence analysts and military officials [who recently] gathered in Sarajevo agreed that Putin’s threats of nuclear assault are a red herring. In fact, they said, his most dangerous weapons are sabotage, misinformation and political meddling, mainstays of Soviet-era spy games that Putin has revived and honed for the modern era. Furthermore, the war has already begun and is well underway around Europe’s fringe – the places that were once part of Moscow’s sphere but have looked westwards since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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Bosnia [is] an early testing ground for his hybrid weapons. It is exactly the kind of fractured society that Putin likes to play on: a multiethnic and religious country where the wounds of the 1990s have not yet been healed, and communities live side by side without coexisting. Although on paper it is on the path towards EU and NATO membership, Moscow has in recent years made overtures to its Serb Orthodox minority and their leader, Milorad Dodik, helping to stoke threats of separatism that could, in the worst case, reignite the country’s conflict.
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In Georgia, where European and NATO integration is enshrined in the constitution, the increasingly pro-Russian incumbent party, Georgian Dream, won a new parliamentary term in October in an election that the opposition and the EU claim was marred by voter fraud. Georgia’s population is overwhelmingly pro-European, but Georgian Dream, which first came to power in 2012, has won support by playing on voters’ fears that a pro-EU government would drag the country into a Ukraine-style war with Putin.
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In Romania, a former Soviet satellite that joined NATO in 2004 and the EU in 2007, Calin Georgescu, an unknown and pro-Russian independent candidate, took the most votes in the first round of presidential elections in this month. The country’s supreme defence council alleged that there was outside interference, including through the social media site TikTok, which is accused of giving Georgescu preferential exposure. On 6 December Romania’s the constitutional court annulled the result and ordered a rerun.
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In Moldova, a referendum to change the constitution in order to progress towards EU membership was passed narrowly after what Maia Sandu, the country’s pro-western president, described as an ‘unprecedented assault’ on its democracy. In the weeks before the vote Moldova’s authorities uncovered huge payments by Ilan Shor, a pro-Russian businessman who resides in Moscow, to persuade Moldovans to vote no or abstain from the referendum. Sandu said that at least 300,000 votes had been ‘bought’ by Shor; Russia denied involvement in the scheme.
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In Armenia, [officials] said they had disrupted a Russian-backed attempt to unseat the government of prime minister Nikol Pashinyan. The country, once Putin’s closest ally in the southern Caucasus, turned away from Moscow after neighbouring Azerbaijan seized back the disputed region of Nagorno Karabakh in September 2023 – under the noses of Russian peacekeepers, who were supposed to be securing a ceasefire line. Armenia signed the Rome Statute to recognise the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and withdrew from the Russia-centred Collective Security Treaty Organisation in response.
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European countries are currently experiencing a barrage of cyber-attacks and sabotage, which the Kremlin denies any hand in, but diplomats say are almost certainly Russian-backed. This month Jan Lipavsky, the Czech foreign minister, said that up to a hundred suspicious incidents this year can be traced back to the Kremlin. They include the destruction of undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, and fires at DHL depots in the UK caused by incendiary devices. Those who fear a wider war with Russia should know that the war has already begun.
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Today, Russia has ascended as a major power with expansionist ambitions and the Balkans are, once again, a battleground for influence in Europe’s new Cold War. Turkey and Russia, both historic players in the western Balkans, are projecting influence using religious and cultural links, while China is leveraging debt diplomacy through infrastructure deals.
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The Kremlin’s hybrid warfare tactics in the Balkans have been exposed several times in recent years. In 2016, the Montenegrin government foiled a coup plot, which included a plan to assassinate the then-prime minister, Milo Dukanovic; Podgorica accused ‘Russian state structures’ of being behind the plot, and indicted two Russian GRU agents, as well as several Serbian citizens. Russia has also been accused of organising coup attempts in Bulgaria in 2016.
In North Macedonia, it was discovered that much of the fake news produced in the lead up to the 2016 US election was being produced by local teenagers, who were paid large sums of money by recruiters to write anti-immigration content for American audiences. Today, there are dozens of local-language news sites across the region which regurgitate content from RT and Sputnik, the Kremlin’s main propaganda channels, and promote pro-Russian views on the war in Ukraine in particular.
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Moscow is also worried about the West’s ability to influence. It is setting up its defences. […] Its economy is about to fall apart, its interest rates have spiked. Its sovereign wealth fund is dwindling and 40 per cent of its budget is going to the military. It has a new dependency on China.
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The Russian rouble has crashed, adding further to the country’s internal instability. Putin may be threatening nuclear attack, but these troubles will not go away should he push the button. Neither is there any sign that he will be pushed from power, however. Western countries must learn how to confront him on the battlefield he is already playing. Not many people have insights into Putin’s character, but Kenneth Dekleva, a professor of psychiatry who has worked with the US state department to profile leaders, understands him better than most.
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Showing fear of a nuclear attack gives Putin exactly what he wants. Understanding and using his own weapons against him is the only way to fight back.