Latest Articles about Balkans

Moscow Orchestrates Controversy Between Bulgaria and Ukraine to Weaken Kyiv

Last week (May 20), pro-Russian legislative deputies in Bulgaria and pro-Moscow ethnic-Bulgarian politicians in Ukraine protested a decision by the Ukrainian government to redraw administrative borders in Odesa Oblast. The Kremlin-leaning ethnic-Bulgarians who expressed their objection said the move was intended to divide their more-than-200,000-strong... MORE

COVID-19 Increases Importance of Middle Corridor

Following the large coronavirus outbreak in Iran, neighboring countries quickly closed their borders with the Islamic Republic. More than a thousand Turkish trucks carrying goods to Central Asia found themselves stuck at checkpoints due to the closure of the Iran-Turkey and Iran-Turkmenistan borders (Daily Sabah,... MORE

Russia Faces New Demands and Conditions From Bulgaria

Tensions between Russia and Bulgaria looked on the verge of resolution at the end of last month. But trust between the two countries has since declined. In late January, Bulgaria announced its intention to replace half of its Russian natural gas consumption with volumes from... MORE

TurkStream: Triumph or Failure for Russia?

In a grand ceremony in Istanbul, on January 9, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, officially opened the TurkStream natural gas pipeline, running from Russia to Turkey along the Black Sea seabed (TRT World, January 9, 2020). The pipeline is... MORE

Europe Ensnared in a Web of Russian Spies

On December 4, the French newspaper Le Monde published a report arguing that at least 15 Russian spies allegedly belonging to “Unit 29155” of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU) have been using the Haute-Savoie... MORE

The Kremlin Tries to Exorcise the Memory of the Berlin Wall

The massive spontaneous eruption of street protests in East Germany 30 years ago culminated in the breach of the ominous Berlin Wall, and that breakthrough determined the end of the Soviet system and collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) two years later.... MORE