International security

Why it’s such a big problem for Putin if the Balkan countries enter the EU

Having more or less seen off the West in Syria, Vladimir Putin is turning his attention to a much bigger prize in his permanent obsession with undermining European geo-political cohesion. As Russia’s chief international ideologue, Sergei Karaganov, proclaimed: “For at least the past decade, the world has been witnessing the endgame of the West’s 500-year hegemony.”

Russia is determined to accelerate that endgame by encouraging any moves that weaken European Union cohesion. Der Spiegel reports that Germany’s intelligence service BND, the equivalent of MI5, has evidence that Russian trolls strongly backed Catalonian secessionist. A break up of Spain, like Brexit, weakens EU unity – a key Kremlin foreign policy goal.

Having crushed the Germans in 1945 and taken control of half of Europe, Russia felt that it was finally the hegemonic power in its European backyard. Britain, under a fiercely anti-communist Labour government headed by patriotic and Moscow-suspicious leaders like Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin, forged an alliance with Washington that unlike 1920, kept the US anchored in Europe. But Nato was not as important as the European economic integration that began in 1950 and gradually incorporated all European states by 1990.