North Macedonia Warns EU of Growing Russian Influence Amid Stalled Accession

On 03 April 2025, Euronews report­ed that North Mace­do­nia’s For­eign Min­is­ter has issued a clear warn­ing about Rus­si­a’s expand­ing influ­ence in the West­ern Balka­ns if the Euro­pean Union fails to demon­strate a firm com­mit­ment to enlarge­ment. The arti­cle begins:

North Mace­do­nia has made a clear warn­ing of grow­ing Russ­ian influ­ence in the West­ern Balka­ns if the EU does not com­mit quick­ly and clear­ly to enlarge­ment. “We changed our flag, we changed our cur­ren­cy, we changed the con­sti­tu­tion sev­er­al times, we even changed the name of our coun­try. All with the promise of a win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty that we’ve been told exist­ed if we do these changes for our path towards the Euro­pean Union,” For­eign Min­is­ter Tim­cho Mucun­s­ki told Euronews. Mucun­s­ki warned that the EU’s cred­i­bil­i­ty is at stake, and that enlarge­ment is nec­es­sary to pre­vent weapon­is­ing Russ­ian propaganda…

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Key Points

• Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da is specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing North Mace­do­nia, ques­tion­ing the EU’s sin­cer­i­ty regard­ing enlarge­ment after two decades of unful­filled promises.
• For­eign Min­is­ter Mucun­s­ki specif­i­cal­ly warned about “malign actors” exploit­ing Mace­do­nia’s frus­tra­tion with the con­stant­ly shift­ing acces­sion requirements.
• Rus­si­a’s influ­ence oper­a­tions in the West­ern Balka­ns aim to under­mine the EU’s cred­i­bil­i­ty and exploit bilat­er­al dis­putes between Balkan nations.
• The pro­longed acces­sion process—delayed by dis­putes with Greece and Bulgaria—creates a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that Rus­sia is active­ly weaponiz­ing in its region­al infor­ma­tion campaigns.

On 12 Sep­tem­ber 2002, GIOR post­ed on a George­town Uni­ver­si­ty Berkley Cen­ter report on Russia’s influ­ence in the Balka­ns, argu­ing that Rus­sia uses his­tor­i­cal, cul­tur­al, and reli­gious links to spread its influ­ence in the region.

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