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Alongside its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March 2022, Russia has intensified its efforts to undermine the national and common policies of the EU and NATO, as well as the other countries on the continent, by using hybrid operations and leveraging its economic influence. The countries of Southeastern Europe have been the Kremlin’s particular focus and primary target, as they are considered by the Putin regime to be part of Russia’s geopolitical sphere of interest. Using the toolbox of state capture, including disinformation as a specific instrument of its hybrid threats, Russia has focused its efforts on critical sectors such as energy, finance, telecommunications, defence and media, exploiting and reinforcing existing governance weaknesses and deficits in these countries in order to undermine both their Euro-Atlantic positions and public confidence in democratic institutions and European policies and values. Moreover, the protracted process of the Western Balkans’ accession to the EU and decades of internal political conflicts, such as those between Kosovo and Serbia or North Macedonia and Bulgaria, have made the region even more vulnerable to the authoritarian influence of Russia and, increasingly, China. In particular, in the media sectors across the region, the Kremlin has been able to exploit problems of content provision, low levels of media freedom and poor implementation of ownership transparency regulations to increase its information influence, using both economic and political means. This has been facilitated by alarmingly high levels of cognitive capture among the general population and political and economic elites, often reinforced by limited, ineffective or non-existent national policies to counter foreign information manipulation and interference.
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