Western Balkans, a region which includes the states of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Kosovo, is of immense geopolitical importance today and is increasingly under the influence of competing great power interests. While the West, i.e. the EU and the USA, endeavors to gradually integrate these countries into the European Union, actors such as Russia, China and Turkey are pursuing their own goals. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the six states of the Western Balkans with regard to the influence by external actors. What was brought to light here is an extremely differentiated picture of the region, with regional peculiarities in history, religion and other factors being decisive for the current orientation of the respective Western Balkan countries.
Authors: Haris Ćutahija, Alba Cela, Azra Karastanović, Zoran Nechev, Ivan Nikolovski, Strahinja Subotić and Demush Shasha
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