Monthly Journal
October 2025
The NATO Defense College Foundation, which has always promoted high‑level dialogue and analysis, particularly focusing on the Balkan region, has organised another High-Level Conference titled “Balkans and Black Sea Perspectives 2025. Building bridges: defusing hybrid threats for regional stability”. Do you want to catch up?
Here is the clickable YouTube link!
International Press Review
The most relevant events of the area through international sources
US sanctions hit Russian-Serbian energy giant NIS
Balkan Insight
Sanctions on Serbia’s largest oil importer, NIS, took effect on 8 October after the US declined to grant a further waiver to Belgrade. The Russian-controlled company, that operates more than 300 petrol stations and is key in securing the energy supplies to Serbia, said it had enough crude reserves to maintain normal supply across the country. Nonetheless, customers were advised to use domestic Dina cards, cash or instant payments, as foreign cards such as Visa and MasterCard no longer function at NIS stations. The company pledged to uphold its supply commitments and protect jobs, while the Serbian authorities claimed they are searching for long-term solutions. President Vucic warned, however, that the sanctions would have a serious impact on the Balkan country.
Serbian refinery will work only until 25 November due to sanctions
Reuters
Serbia’s only oil refinery in Pančevo is expected to keep operating only until 25 November unless new crude supplies were secured, after sanctions halted deliveries to its operator, NIS. The company, controlled by Russia’s Gazprom Neft and Gazprom, lost access to crude oil from the JANAF pipeline (from Croatia) and had its bank payments blocked following the full enforcement of sanctions on 8 October. Serbian Energy Minister claimed the country reserves held sufficient oil and fuel reserves to maintain stability. The refinery, near Belgrade, is vital to Serbia’s domestic energy supply.
Bosnia finally adopts its Reform Agenda
European Western Balkans
After months of delay, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Council of Ministers approved the country’s Reform Agenda, becoming the last in the region to do so. The document outlined reforms to be completed by 2027 to access the so-called EU “Growth Plan” for the Western Balkans. Its adoption was a prerequisite for the first financing round, following the loss of 108 million due to earlier delays. On the final day before risking a further loss, Bosnian Serb ministers lifted their vetoes. EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos welcomed the decision as a sign of long-needed unity.
Vucic claims “terrorist attack” happened in front of Parliament
Politico
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic claimed a shooting outside Serbia’s parliament in Belgrade, which left one person injured, was as a terrorist attack. The incident occurred near a tent camp set up by Vucic’s supporters amid ongoing student-led protests that have grown into the largest anti-government demonstrations since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. The suspected gunman, a pensioner from Belgrade, was arrested shortly after the attack. The student movement, which is preparing another mass rally for the 1st of November, the anniversary of the Novi Sad tragedy, stressed that their movement rejected any form of violence.
Serbian mayors come back to Kosovo’s north municipalities
Balkan Insight
Belgrade-backed party Srpska Lista (SL) won in most Serb-majority municipalities during Kosovo’s local elections in October, marking a significant political comeback in the four northern areas previously run by ethnic Albanian mayors following a two-year boycott. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic welcomed the outcome, thanking Serb voters for the support to SL. Across Kosovo, most major Albanian-majority municipalities, including Pristina, Peja/Pec, South Mitrovica and Prizren, appeared set for second-round contests to be held in November, after inconclusive first-round results.
Turkish drones arrive to Kosovo
Daily Sabah
Containers carrying Turkish Skydagger RTF 15 kamikaze drones arrived in Kosovo, an early delivery under a contract signed last December with Baykar, the manufacturer’s parent company. Prime Minister Albin Kurti said dozens of Kosovo Security Force soldiers had already been trained to operate the ready-to-fly systems, which were intended for precision strikes against moving and stationary targets and were delivered three months ahead of schedule. Kurti said the drones, transported on recently acquired Rheinmetall 8×8 trucks, would bolster Kosovo’s defences alongside existing Baykar TB2 Bayraktar and US Puma systems.
Serbia should do concrete steps to join the EU
Euractiv
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged Serbia to take tangible steps towards EU membership, stressing the need for reforms in the rule of law, electoral standards, media freedom and alignment with EU sanctions against Russia. Speaking alongside President Vucic in Belgrade, she called for “greater foreign policy alignment” and an inclusive approach to strengthen stability. Vucic has long balanced ties between Brussels, Moscow and Beijing, while von der Leyen visit came amid year-long anti-government protests and US sanctions that hit Serbia’s oil industry.
Thousands protest in Tirana in support of former KLA leaders
Intellinews
Thousands gathered in central Tirana on 17 October to demand justice and the release of former Kosovo Liberation Army leaders on trial in The Hague. The rally, called “Freedom Has a Name”, turned Skanderbeg Square into a sea of red and black flags as Albanians from across the Balkans responded to Prime Minister Edi Rama’s call for unity. Images of former Kosovan president Hashim Thaçi and other currently detained former KLA commanders were displayed beside the statue of national hero Skenderbeg.
Ruling conservative party triumphs in local elections in North Macedonia
Balkan Insight
North Macedonia’s ruling VMRO-DPMNE party scored a sweeping victory in the local elections, dominating nearly all ethnic Macedonian-majority areas and leaving the opposition Social Democrats (SDSM) trailing far behind. VMRO-DPMNE candidates won in 53 of the country’s 81 municipalities, including Skopje, where Orce Georgievski took a commanding lead. Over 30 municipalities were secured outright in the first round. Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski hailed the result as proof of national strength and perseverance. The SDSM led in only eight smaller municipalities and suffered defeat even in its long-held stronghold of Strumica.
Bosnian presidency nominates Trump for Nobel Prize for Peace
Newsmax
Bosnia and Herzegovina’s presidency unanimously nominated former US President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing his role in securing a ceasefire in Gaza. The proposal, initiated by Serb member Zeljka Cvijanovic and supported by Bosniak Denis Becirovic and Croat Zeljko Komsic, praised Trump’s “efforts to establish lasting peace” following the deal signed in Egypt between Israel and Hamas. Cvijanovic said Trump’s recent involvement confirmed his merit for the award. The nomination came a day after the Gaza truce agreement.
The Insight Angle
Eric Gordy
Eric Gordy is a Professor of Political and Cultural Sociology at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He is the author of “Guilt, Responsibility and Denial: The Past at Stake in Post-Milošević Serbia” and, most recently, of “Captured Societies in Southeast Europe: Networks of Trust and Control”. A leading expert on the Western Balkans, he is a frequent commentator on the region’s social and political dynamics.
In “Captured Societies in Southeast Europe: Networks of Trust and Control”, you and the other authors describe the Balkans as “captured societies”, where “political and economic elites” seized since decades the “control over the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government”. How widespread is this phenomenon across the region, and how damaging is it for the development and also for the democracy?
The capture of the institutions of government represents one dimension of the overall picture, which a lot of earlier researchers have described using the category of “state capture”. We think that the problem goes deeper than that.
In a captured society, the networks of people in power do not only control the means by which public decisions are made, they also control access to all of the benefits of living in the society: access to social welfare, education, health care, employment, all of the things that people need in order to be able to function. So, this means that people have no choice but to become engaged with informal networks that are ultimately controlled by political parties.
Back in the days of state socialism, people liked to say that you needed to be a member of the Communist party to get a job. This was partly true, you needed it to get the most high-ranking jobs, to be a company director or a senior public official, for example. Now you need to be a member of a party to get any job, even a job making coffee. And you need to maintain your good standing as a member by recruiting more members and soliciting votes. This makes societal capture more resilient than state capture.
The regime in a captured state can be changed in an election, and societal capture is designed to make that less probable. As for variation, we find that this system is less consolidated in EU member states. But it is not absent in those states.
The book gives the impression that many Balkan countries are “failed” democracies, or rather autocracies or “stabilocracies”, where informal networks play a major role in supporting political control and vice versa. Is that an accurate reading? And is there any realistic way to counter this phenomenon?
Ideas like stabilocracy and failed or blocked transition are useful, but they are incomplete. They only explain what parties and politicians at the top levels of the system are doing. We wanted to go deeper and talk about the lived experience of citizens without political power.
One of our main findings is about the exchange of favours and services within groups like families, neighbourhoods and communities; these originally developed as ways to allow people to meet their needs in an environment where formal institutions were failing to meet them. But they came under the control of political parties, where connections could be leveraged to assure that people’s short-term requests could be satisfied.
On the one hand, this means that informal networks provide a way for people to get access to the things that they need. On the other hand, this has the effect of increasing the control of these networks over the lives of people. One consequence is that politics come to be emptied of content; people do not support the parties that propose ideas that they agree with or that articulate their goals, but parties that can solve immediate problems for them [Note of the Editor, the Italian “voto di scambio” expression captures the essence of the problem, loosely translated into “vote trading”].
When we talk about Balkans, we talk about states that aspire to join the European Union. Is the integration process, through its reform requirements, actually helping to reduce state and societal capture? Or does the EU, indirectly, end up reinforcing the power of those already in control? If yes, how?
A lot of EU-backed reforms are proposed with good intentions and with the idea of reducing corruption and establishing standards as high as the ones in EU member states. But the implementation of these reforms is in the hands of elites who redirect them for their own benefit. Sometimes this means passing laws but not enforcing them at all. In some cases, the redirection is visible.
In North Macedonia, the EU recommended establishing judicial councils, to remove the executive and political parties from the process of appointing judges and put appointments in the hands of experts who would appoint judges based on merit. What happened was that the party in power packed the councils with loyalists, which made the judiciary less independent.
In Serbia the EU wanted to enhance independence of media so they recommended that government-owned media outlets should be sold. The result was that a lot of community broadcasters owned by city and local governments were transferred to the ownership of businesspeople connected to the governing party.
You mentioned that a captured state, and the powerful informal economic networks infesting it, can even contribute to tragedies such as the one in Novi Sad last year. Is that correct? And if so, can the massive protests in Serbia be understood as a form of resistance to this “captured society”?
The collapse of the train station roof in Novi Sad can be traced directly to the power of informal networks. The governing party, which controlled the city, provincial and state governments, awarded the contract for renovation of the station to companies owned by people connected to the party. They carried out the work and circumvented regular controls like review of the design and inspection of the quality of the construction by engineers.
The original demands of the student protests were mostly directed to exposing the power of this political-financial network. They demanded full publication of the documentation and prosecution of the people responsible – basically they demanded that the administrative and legal institutions should operate in the way that they are described in the laws that established them. When the president tried to make deals with them directly, they refused, saying “it’s not your responsibility” (nisi nadležan, in Serbian) and demanded that the institutions work instead. They did this knowing perfectly well that the regime could not afford to meet their demands for transparency because it would expose the corrupt character of the ruling network.
The protest is a perfect reflection of one of the main findings of our study: people want a functioning state with reliable institutions, and the demand for this is one of the strongest forces that can undermine the power of informal networks.
The Key Story
Strategic trends
The political crisis in Kosovo deepens, with early elections looming
Kosovo appears to be sliding deeper into one of the most serious political crises in its recent history, with the Balkan country still lacking a government after the February parliamentary election and early polls looming. The political paralysis could also have a negative impact on the stalled dialogue with Serbia and on Pristina’s European integration process.
The crisis seemed to be over as early as August, when Kosovo’s parliament finally managed to elect a new speaker, ending a six-month legislative deadlock that had blocked outgoing Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s efforts to form a new government following the inconclusive February election. Under Kosovo’s constitution, a parliamentary speaker must be elected before the winning party can form a government, but without cross-party support this had proved difficult, leading to a stalemate that exposed deep divisions within Europe’s newest state.
In total, the parliament voted more than fifty times before finally agreeing on Dimal Basha, a member of Kurti’s party, Vetevendosje, who secured 73 votes in the 120-seat chamber.
However, the impasse persisted into early October due to the failure to elect an ethnic Serb deputy speaker, prompting Srpska Lista, the biggest Serbian party in Kosovo, to lodge a complaint with the Constitutional Court. Kosovo’s MPs eventually elected an ethnic Serb deputy speaker, but only at the beginning of October, paving the way for the launch of the consultation for the new government, after nearly nine months of political paralysis.
Unfortunately, this did not mark the end of the crisis but rather confirmed the country’s current ungovernability. After receiving the mandate to form a government from President Vjosa Osmani, Acting Prime Minister Albin Kurti failed to secure sufficient support in Kosovo’s parliament, plunging the country deeper into political turmoil and bringing it closer to a second election within the same year. On the 26th of October, only 56 deputies voted in favour of Kurti’s proposed new administration (five short of the required majority), while 52 voted against and four abstained.
Parliamentary Speaker Dimal Basha stated that responsibility for the next steps now lay with President Vjosa Osmani. Under the constitution, Osmani was required to appoint a second prime minister-designate within ten days. However, Memli Krasniqi, leader of the assembly’s second-largest party, the Democratic Party of Kosovo, announced that he would urge Osmani to call immediate elections. Several other parties and political analysts shared that view.
The Kosovo Democratic Institute (KDI), a nongovernmental organisation promoting democratic governance and transparency, said the outcome was a direct consequence of the absence of political dialogue and the failure to reach agreements that would ensure the normal functioning of state institutions. In a statement, the KDI added that, under the current circumstances, early parliamentary elections represented the most sustainable and credible way to end the crisis and return to citizens the opportunity to determine the country’s political direction.
Acting Prime Minister Albin Kurti also acknowledged that the only way out of the crisis would be to hold early elections. A day after failing to secure the necessary votes for reappointment as prime minister, Kurti held a press conference, saying that the opposition had denied him the opportunity to continue what he regarded as the good work of the past four years. And mentioning new elections as the most suitable way out from the impasse.
Overall, Kosovo appears to be heading towards new parliamentary elections by the end of the year. However, experts warned that the outcome might mirror the inconclusive February vote, once again stalling the formation of a stable government. The country is also due to hold presidential elections in the spring of 2026, a prospect that could further deepen the uncertainty.
The ongoing political paralysis has underscored the fragility of Kosovo’s institutions and the persistent divisions within its political class. Prolonged instability risks eroding public trust in democratic processes, weakening governance, and further delaying the country’s European integration, and the dialogue with Belgrade, essential for the future of the region. Moreover, unless a genuine consensus emerges among key parties, Kosovo could remain trapped in a cycle of short-lived governments and recurring elections, undermining its credibility both domestically and internationally.
Further News and Views
Dodik takes a step back, US cancels sanctions
Sources: Reuters, Balkan Insight, Associated Press, Politico
Bosnia and Herzegovina appears to have overcome its most severe political and institutional crisis in years. On the 18th of October, Bosnian Serb lawmakers appointed an interim president, formally acknowledging that Milorad Dodik was stepping aside after a state court barred him from political activity. The temporary president of Republika Srpska (RS) would serve until early presidential elections, set for 23 November. The RS Parliament simultaneously repealed several separatist laws adopted over the past year, following Dodik’s indictment for defying decisions by Bosnia’s international peace envoy and the Constitutional Court. A referendum that Dodik had announced for the 25th of October also did not take place.
Soon after, the US Treasury Department lifted sanctions on the Bosnian Serb leader, his associates, relatives, and affiliated companies, as announced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). OFAC gave no reason for removing dozens of figures, including government ministers and Dodik’s son and daughter, from the sanctions list, but Dodik has been intensively lobbying in the US to achieve the goal of the abolition of the sanctions.
Dodik, the former president of Republika Srpska, had been stripped of his mandate in August following the court ruling that banned him from politics. He had been under US sanctions since 2017 for undermining the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended Bosnia’s 1990s war. In a post on X, Dodik thanked US President Donald Trump for what he described as a correction of past injustices against Republika Srpska and its representatives.
Mixed reactions in the Balkans about the idea of UK migrant hubs
Sources: The Guardian, Telegraph, Associated Press, Associated Press (2)
A United Kingdom proposal to relocate refused asylum seekers to “return hubs” in third countries, including several in the Western Balkans, drew mixed reactions across the region. Under the plan, individuals whose asylum applications had been rejected in the UK would be transferred to foreign detention facilities after exhausting all legal appeals. The proposal, revealed by The Times, forms part of a broader British effort to toughen migration policy by outsourcing asylum procedures beyond its borders, echoing controversial models tested elsewhere.
Kosovo became the first and only state to signal its willingness to cooperate, with acting Prime Minister Albin Kurti confirming ongoing talks with UK officials. He said his government wished to assist London and indicated that Kosovo expected security-related support in return, such as strategic agreements, equipment, or joint projects.
Montenegro’s Prime Minister, Milojko Spajic, stated that his government was ready to discuss such an arrangement, but only if Britain committed to substantial investment in local infrastructure. In contrast, Bosnia and Herzegovina said the Balkan country would not consider hosting people transferred from the UK. North Macedonia also made clear that it had no interest in participating in the scheme.
EU - NATO
NATO PA Assembly urges defence spending to rise to 5% of GDP
Sources: STA, NATO PA, Euro-Atlantic Council of Slovenia
The NATO Parliamentary Assembly held its 71st annual session in Ljubljana, urging member states to meet the pledge to raise defence and security spending to 5% of GDP by 2035.
Delegates also called for stronger support for Ukraine and enhanced collective defence in response to ongoing security threats. Assembly President Marcos Perestrello told participants that governments must explain to citizens why increased military investment was essential to prevent conflict and safeguard freedom.
The assembly recommended a substantial boost to air and missile defence capabilities, particularly on NATO’s eastern flank, where Russian aircraft have violated allied airspace.
It also urged tougher action against foreign interference targeting stability in the Western Balkans, greater investment in social resilience and closer transatlantic coordination to ensure more effective defence spending.
ECONOMICS
Balkans show surprisingly strong resilience in economic terms
Source: WIIW
A recent analysis by the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW, Wiener Institut für Internationale Wirtschaftsvergleiche) concluded that the six Western Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia) had displayed notable economic resilience, distinguishing them within the broader Central, East and Southeast Europe (CESEE) region.
According to WIIW, this stronger performance stemmed from several unexpected structural factors. Their economies were less integrated into global manufacturing chains, which in the current climate of trade disruptions and geopolitical fragmentation acted as a buffer. Moreover, labour scarcity caused by demographic decline was paradoxically boosting wage growth and domestic consumption, creating internal demand where many peers faced stagnation.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) remained relatively substantial, with net inflows in recent quarters amounting to around 5-6% of GDP for the region.
Stefano Giantin
Journalist based in the Balkans since 2005, he covers Central- and Eastern Europe for a wide range of media outlets, including the Italian national news agency ANSA, and the dailies La Stampa and Il Piccolo.
