Thank you for convening this session and for inviting me to appear here. Because the other two witnesses are specialists on the western Balkans, I will focus on the other Balkan countries that are members of NATO. I want to talk today about the security and political stability challenges on NATO's southeastern flank.
There are three primary challenges to security and democratic stability among the Balkan NATO members. The first is kinetic spillover from Russia's war against Ukraine. The second is persistent Russian hybrid warfare. The third is domestic political instability, which is fuelled by a hypersensitive public that distrusts institutions. I want to discuss all three in a bit more detail.
First is the kinetic threat and strategic testing that Russia is doing. The security threat from Russia is really acute in the Balkans. Regular Russian drone incursions into Romanian airspace have escalated in the last few months. Most recently, a Russian drone struck a residential area in the Romanian city of Galati. This is not mere Russian carelessness. These are deliberate tests of NATO resolve. They're designed to trigger or to deepen divisions among the allies on how to respond.
In addition, there are floating naval mines in the Black Sea that consistently jeopardize Bulgarian and Turkish Black Sea shipping lanes, which are also used by Russia's shadow fleet.
The danger of NATO not responding to this Russian escalation is that Russia may move on to targeting logistics networks that support Ukraine's war effort in the Balkans. A decisive, unified NATO deterrent is crucial here.
The good news here is that the Balkan NATO members have all increased their defence spending. They're committed NATO allies. The private defence sector in Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey is actively producing and also striking joint ventures with the burgeoning and improving Ukrainian defence sector. This is a source of strength for the NATO alliance.
The second threat is persistent hybrid interference and warfare from Russia. Russian hybrid warfare—in the form of cyber-attacks, disinformation and financial backing for pro-Russian parties—has low structural costs because it avoids traditional tit-for-tat military responses. Russia is going to keep doing this. Countering it requires vigilance and proactive policies from these countries.
The institutional response to this in the Balkans is somewhat mixed. On the one hand, Romania's judiciary reacted in a very proactive way when it became clear that a candidate in the presidential election in 2024 benefited enormously from targeted Russian disinformation. That candidate was taken down from the runoff. In this way, Romania avoided having a far-right, pro-Russian president.
On the other hand, though, this spring, Bulgaria became a bit more vulnerable. The winner of the April parliamentary elections was a brand new party called—somewhat oxymoronically, because these are not its policies—Progressive Bulgaria, which has a Russia-accommodationist foreign and energy policy. The new government has already started creating opportunities for Russian soft power expansion into Bulgaria. Not yet, but eventually, the Bulgarian government may pursue Orbán style obstructionism at the EU level.
Now, the third threat—