Executive Summary: Serbia’s new government is bolstering its connections with Russia through the appointment of Kremlin-linked ministers. Belgrade is also expanding its economic and media links with China following the visit of Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping. The Aleksandar Vučić administration continues to... MORE

Executive Summary: Gagauzia, a small Christian Turkic and pro-Russian autonomous region, says it will exercise its right to secede and form an independent state if Moldova becomes a part of Romania. Chisinau’s pursuit of EU membership and its increasing pressure on Gagauzia, Moscow’s desire to... MORE

Executive Summary: Serbian President Alexander Vučić confirmed a new $300 million defense contract with Azerbaijan on February 6, following years of strategic agreements between the two countries. The new defense contract will give Azerbaijan a foothold in the Balkans, providing Baku with a path to... MORE

Executive summary: The Kremlin views Serbia as a strategic asset in the Balkans that expands Russia’s geopolitical reach, weakens Western cohesion, and undermines transatlantic institutions. The Serbian government benefits from its alliance with Moscow by having an advocate on the UN Security Council to block... MORE

Thirty years after the Sofia municipality first decided to remove a monument to the Soviet army from the capital city, Bulgaria is finally dismantling the most prominent symbol of Soviet occupation on its territory. Built in 1954 by the communist authorities, the monument depicted a... MORE

On November 20, the secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Jens Stoltenberg, declared that the alliance wholly supports Bosnia-Herzegovina’s territorial integrity. Stoltenberg was speaking in Sarajevo, his first stop on a five-day tour of the Western Balkans that included Kosovo, Serbia, and North... MORE

Bulgaria has finally taken decisive measures to cease its dependence on Russian energy and undercut Moscow’s positions in the Balkan and Central European energy markets. On September 28, the Bulgarian National Assembly voted to introduce a new excise tax on the import and transit of... MORE

On October 2, the State Security Service of Georgia (SSSG) released a statement alleging that three Serbian trainers are recruiting activists with the intent to orchestrate the violent overthrow of the Georgian government (Civil.ge, October 2). The SSSG’s statement highlights the Georgian Dream government’s growing paranoia... MORE

Azerbaijan’s recovery of control over the unrecognized statelet in Karabakh by military means unsurprisingly has been seen by some in other countries as a precedent for action against breakaway republics elsewhere (see EDM, September 20). This is true for Moldova, where several nationalist politicians and... MORE

On September 15, the European Commission decided not to extend the ban on imports of certain grain exports from Ukraine. The ban was imposed after five European Union member states—Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia—effectively pressured Brussels to impose it, fearing destabilization of their domestic... MORE