Vladimir Putin has weighed into the row over Macedonia’s name-change, accusing the US and its allies of destabilising the Balkans by “asserting their dominant role” in the region.
The Russian president criticised what he described as deliberate efforts to increase western influence in a part of the world Moscow has long regarded as falling within its own orbit.
“The policy of the United States and some other western nations in the Balkans, who seek to assert their dominance in the region, has been a serious destabilising factor,” he was quoting as telling Serbia’s Večernje Novosti and Politika newspapers, according to remarks released by the Kremlin. “This will eventually increase mistrust and tension in Europe, rather than improve stability.”
Putin, who made the comments before a visit to Belgrade, Moscow’s staunchest regional ally, deplored Nato’s “destructive” policy of expansion in the historically volatile Balkan peninsula. “We have repeatedly said that we see Nato expansion as a relic of the cold war, an ill-informed and destructive military and political strategy,” he told the papers.
Last week, Macedonian MPs endorsed a landmark accord that will rename the strategic Balkan nation the Republic of North Macedonia in a move that now opens the way to Nato membership.
The name-change deal, reached after almost 30 years of dispute with Greece, is expected to be ratified by lawmakers in Athens within days following a vote of confidence in the Greek parliament at midnight on Wednesday.
The prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, called the vote after the nationalist Independent Greeks party, the junior partner in his leftist-led coalition, pulled out of the government in protest over the agreement.
Tsipras is expected to win the motion, with officials telling the Guardian he would probably bring the Macedonia name-change accord to parliament immediately after.
Athens has blocked Skopje’s entry to Nato and the EU in opposition to a name it has long argued implied territorial ambitions against Greece’s own province of Macedonia.
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