Exhausted by centuries of imperialism, 19th-century Slavic intellectuals proposed “Pan-Slavism”—or the unity of all Slavic peoples along shared cultural and political lines into a singular geopolitical bloc—as a defense against neighboring aggressors. The ideology has found footing with various movements throughout the Slavic world over the last two centuries. Most notably, Pan-Slavism has consistently been invoked by Russians to justify foreign expansion. In the eyes of Moscow, what is Slavic is Russian.
This push for Russian-dominated Pan-Slavism is being employed to justify the invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed that Russian control of Ukraine is necessary to protect against Western corruption of inherently “Eastern” Slavic lands. Despite the fact that Russia and Ukraine are separate states, Putin perceives Ukrainian ties with the West as a direct threat to Slavic unity.
While Russia might win the battle close to home, it could lose the war across the broader Pan-Slavic world. The invasion of Ukraine has sent ripples through Russia’s sphere of influence, and former allies are questioning their allegiance to Moscow. This is nowhere more evident than on the Balkan peninsula, home to the Southern Slavs. Although the Balkans may seem geographically distant from Russia, the region has a strong Slavic history and identity, and it has faced strong pressure from Russia to join its Pan-Slavic orbit, with mixed results. Serbia—Russia’s strongest Balkan ally—is already facing internal dissent, and the current pro-Russian administration seems to be tottering. As Russia attempts to weaponize Pan-Slavism in its invasion of Ukraine, it might lose its already waning grasp on the Southern Slavs.
The Balkan Peninsula saw its first Slavic settlers arrive in the 6th century. Like Ukraine, the Balkans have been a borderland between various powers for millennia. Successive occupations by the Mongols, Ottomans, Austrians, and Germans cut the Southern Slavs off from their Eastern and Western counterparts and introduced the vast diversity of ethnicities, cultures, and religions seen across the peninsula today. This unique ethnic and religious diversity has wrought both extreme ethnic violence and strong “Pan-Slavic” unity at different points in history, creating a complicated web of geopolitical relationships on the peninsula today.
The unification of what is today Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia into Yugoslavia (literally, “Land of Southern Slavs”) in 1918 fostered decades of domestic peace and inclusivity, as the Yugoslav federation remained a member of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries even at the peak of Cold War polarization. Although the Yugoslavian project could be interpreted as a feat of Pan-Slavism, such success was limited to unifying (most of) the Southern Slavs; for the majority of its history, Yugoslavia was not aligned with the otherwise “Pan-Slavic” Soviet Bloc that brought Eastern and Western Slavs together under the Warsaw Pact.
The breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 resurrected violence on the peninsula, as each state stressed its ethnonationalism over its identification with the broader Slavic community. Serbia—as the holdout defender of the Yugoslavian federation—sought to assert itself as the preeminent Slavic state in the region, sparking much of the bitter conflict seen during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Then, Bosnian Muslims faced ethnic cleansing and genocide at the hands of Serbo-nationalist militants, who still call for Bosnian reintegration with Serbia and support Russia today. Calls for Kosovar independence prompted further violence and ethnic cleansing from the Serbian army.
Against the backdrop of the fighting, the new post-Yugoslav nations sought international support to help rebuild their war-torn communities and gain global political legitimacy. Struggling to maintain hegemony over its Southern Slavic neighbors, Serbia turned to Russia (as the main proponent of Pan-Slavism) to bolster its self-proclaimed status as the beacon of Slavism in the Balkans. Over the last three decades, Serbia has undertaken the task of doing Putin’s bidding throughout the Southern Slavic region in the hopes of becoming a major player in the broader Slavic pantheon. Although Serbia is a candidate for the European Union, many Serbs consider Russia to be their “greatest friend.” The European Union recently escalated pressure on Serbia to abandon its ties to Russia by making membership approval conditional upon whether Serbia joins all other members in sanctioning Russia for invading Ukraine. In response, Serbia signed a major three-year gas supply deal with Putin.
But close Serbian allyship with Russia, coupled with severe trauma from prior Serbian aggression, has already pushed all other Balkan nations into the wide arms of the West. Since 2020, every Balkan state except Serbia, Kosovo, and Bosnia has become a member of NATO—and in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NATO has affirmed support for Bosnia’s imminent accession. Croatia recently joined Slovenia as a full member of the EU Schengen Zone, which the country’s internal minister hailed as “the final affirmation of our European identity.” Other Balkan states like Montenegro have expressed frustration regarding their stagnant EU candidacies and are determined to achieve accession soon. In response, Russia has launched multiple covert operations to foment unrest in countries like Montenegro, with the aim of turning their governments back Eastward—mostly to no avail.
Russia’s Balkan ambitions could therefore be reaching a breaking point. And, although threats from the European Union seem to leave Serbia unfazed, escalations of Russian aggression and disdain for the current pro-Russian government in Belgrade have sparked massive domestic unrest that could sever Serbian ties to Moscow for good.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has become increasingly authoritarian while also making obvious overtures to Putin. Opposition to Vučić has been mounting for months due to his violent rhetoric—reminiscent of Putin’s in recent years—which many blame for inciting two mass shootings in May 2023 that claimed the lives of 17 people, most of whom were children. The resulting Serbia Against Violence protests continued for months. Vučić attempted to consolidate power in the wake of the unrest by spouting violent and nationalist rhetoric, using the police to suppress protests, and launching smear campaigns against the media and European Union, the latter of which he recently blamed for an alleged “destabilization campaign” against him. He also called a snap election in December 2023—a tactic he has used before when faced with declining popularity. The Serbia Against Violence protests facilitated a union of multiple opposition parties in the elections, calling for stronger democratic protections safeguarded by Western democratic institutions like the European Union and the United Nations. Vučić won in December, but only through fraud, intimidation, ballot stuffing, and even bussing voters in from Bosnia. These instances of democratic backsliding have left the Serbian public fed up with their Eastern alignment, with daily protests resuming to demand the elections be voided. Russia has responded by staunchly defending Vučić and the fairness of the elections.
Back in June 2023, Prime Minister Ana Brnabić said she was willing to resign if it would quell protests—a gambit widely seen as trying to take the pressure off Vučić. In March, Vučić announced that Brnabić would indeed step down amid government reshuffling following the December elections. Only a few days later, Vučić also announced that the Belgrade municipal elections would be rerun in June due to allegations of fraud. After nearly a year of antigovernment and pro-Western demonstrations, Vučić is feeling the pressure. Further cracks in Vučić’s legitimacy could spell the end for pro-Russian politicians in Serbia as opposition to the West becomes increasingly unpopular. Recent comments from Putin claiming that international support for Kosovo should set a precedent for the recognition of pro-Russian breakaway states in eastern Ukraine have even made some pro-Russian Serbians feel betrayed by their closest ally.
Russia’s war for Ukraine is undercutting buy-in for Russian influence across the Balkans, including in Serbia, whose delicate balancing act between East and West looks increasingly untenable domestically. Shocking gun violence and democratic backsliding have pushed swaths of Serbs to align with Western integration and criticize Vučić as a singular corrupting force in politics. Russia might solidify its hold over Ukraine, but its grip on the Balkans is slipping. Instead of achieving the Pan-Slavic dream, Russia may be handing the Southern Slavs over to the Western Pan-European order on a silver platter.