Macedonia eyes NATO to ward off Russian meddling

Bloomberg

The Republic of Macedonia’s new government is stepping up its efforts to join NATO, arguing that membership in the military alliance will protect the Balkan nation from Russia “interfering” in its affairs, the country’s defense minister said.
“Influences interfering in this strategic goal aren’t helpful, and they’re not friendly,” Defense Minister Radmila Sekerinska said in an interview in Skopje last week. “We’ve seen some leaks, even before the government was elected, about Russian attempts for influence in key political and security areas. And we have been concerned about them. We believe Macedonian NATO membership can put an end to these attempts.”
After undergoing the first change in leadership in more than a decade in June, the nation of 2 million people is trying to rejuvenate its efforts to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
As part of that push, Prime Minister Zoran Zaev’s government is trying to rebuild regional ties after accusing the previous administration of deliberately fueling a naming dispute with Greece dating back to 1991, when the nation broke away from Yugoslavia and called itself Republic of Macedonia. Greece, which blocked its neighbor’s attempts to join NATO because of the dispute, believes that to be a territorial claim on its neighboring northern province of the same name.
While some countries that gained independence after the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s have joined the EU and NATO, laggards like the Republic of Macedonia are now caught in a power struggle between Russia on one side and Europe and the US on the other. Tensions escalated after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, prompting the biggest standoff with the US since the Cold War. They deepened further after US President Donald Trump raised questions about
the future of NATO and relations with Moscow.
Russia remains opposed to NATO expansion in Europe and has been accused of trying to derail the region’s western accession efforts. Last year, Montenegro’s government said the Kremlin led a failed coup during parliamentary elections,
allegations that Russia denies.
Sekerinska, the 45-year-old deputy chairwoman of the ruling Social Democratic Union, said the cabinet was seeking to improve ties with Greece and commit to domestic reforms within nine months to be able to join NATO “as soon as possible.” The yield on the Republic of Macedonia’s euro-denominated bonds maturing in July 2023 fell two basis points to an all-time low of 3.87 percent at 2:03 p.m. in Skopje.