Britain must step up to help counter Russia’s threat in the Balkans
Keir Starmer welcomes Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama to a meeting of leaders of six Western Balkan nations with British and European officials at a Western Balkans Summit in London, October 2025 (Credit: AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, Pool)
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During last month’s Western Balkans Leaders’ Summit in London, the Prime Minister referred to the region as “Europe’s crucible – the place where the security of our continent is put to the test”.
His remarks echo those of Lord Robertson, who observes in the foreword of a new policy report by the New Diplomacy Project: “All too often recent history shows that what happens in the Western Balkans does not stop in the Western Balkans.”
The UK has long understood that this vulnerable region is Europe’s strategic underbelly, where malign Russian and Chinese influences have fomented a succession of crises that have drained precious resources from Britain and its Nato allies in the face of Moscow’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine.
But, given the various global crises in recent years, neither the UK nor its allies have always acted on this knowledge. This has been especially detrimental to the UK’s strategic interests because the Western Balkans could serve as a critical membrane, binding Britain’s concerns with both the security and stability of the continent. It would also ensure ongoing US commitments to the transatlantic relationship at a time when growing segments of the American public are souring on Washington’s overseas commitments.
But the Restoring British Leadership in the Western Balkans report offers a blueprint for how the UK can effectively counter Russian and Chinese incursions into the continent in support of the government’s strategic defence and security goals.
First, the UK should lead by example and invest directly in regional security. In addition to the government’s already promised commitments to the Nato KFOR mission in Kosovo, the UK should spearhead the creation of a Balkans Joint Expeditionary Force (BJEF), whose chief deployment should be in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), and have as its primary aim the prevention of any secessionist adventurism by Russian-aligned Bosnian Serb hardliner Milorad Dodik and his allies.
Ideally, that deployment would be buttressed by the signing of bilateral security agreements with both Kosovo and BiH, as a strong signal of the UK’s desire to pursue Nato’s enlargement in the region within the next decade.
That will mean making Kosovo’s recognition as a sovereign state a bilateral issue between the UK and the Nato capitals who have not done so to date. It may also mean a more concerted British push for modest constitutional reform in BiH, to tip the country into the alliance on whose doorstep it has been since 2018.
These are significant undertakings, but they are hardly Herculean. And they should absolutely be within the realm of possibility for any UK government that is serious about contesting Eurasia’s new geopolitics.
Moreover, these efforts in effect pay for themselves. By championing Kosovo’s full recognition by all Nato and EU member states, the UK can demonstrate its capacity to both Brussels and Washington to mediate entrenched diplomatic disputes as a capable honest broker.
By ensconcing BiH under the full aegis of the Atlantic alliance, the UK not only denies Russia its likeliest “second front” in its ongoing challenge to Europe’s peace, it brings into Nato a critically needed workhorse munitions producer.
And as the Starmer government has already recognised, by investing in the region’s economic and democratic resilience capacities it will sweeten appetites among local leaders to assist with the UK’s ongoing migration challenges.
Restoring British primacy in the Western Balkans, in short, is an integral part of any comprehensive foreign policy to advance the UK’s core strategic aims on both sides of the Atlantic.
Dr Jasmin Mujanović is an author and senior non-resident fellow at the New Lines Institute
