Major General Saško Lafčiski, Chief of the General Staff of the Macedonian Army, is on a three-day official visit to the Albanian Armed Forces. The visit runs from 11 to 13 May, in a period when the region is increasingly aligning around shared security projects - all of them under the NATO umbrella.

His Albanian counterpart, Lieutenant General Arben Kindži, and Defence Minister Ermal Nufi took part in the meetings. The talks focused on „bilateral military cooperation, exchange of experience, strengthening regional and collective security and stability" - a formulation that always sounds the same in diplomacy, but which, under current conditions, takes on concrete weight.

Albanian minister Nufi particularly highlighted the importance of Corridor VIII for military mobility and the security of the Western Balkans. That matters because Corridor VIII (Durrës - Skopje - Sofia - Varna) is one of the key transport and strategic axes connecting the Adriatic to the Black Sea. In an era when the war in Ukraine is reshaping every European supply chain, that same corridor becomes a geopolitical instrument.

Lafčiski will also visit the Special Operations Regiment of the Albanian armed forces, to learn about their operational capacities. The delegation is also discussing concrete contributions to the EUFOR ALTHEA mission in Bosnia and NATO KFOR in Kosovo - two missions where Macedonian and Albanian soldiers already work side by side.

The bigger story here is that Macedonia and Albania are aligning their approaches to SEDM/SIBRIG and the A-5 Charter with the US. That's part of a long-term plan - for the region's armies to operate as a single operational corps under NATO. It sounds bureaucratic. In practice it means that if a conflict breaks out, the joint response is already operationally ready.

For the Balkans, this is an important scene. The old rivalries between Albanian and Macedonian states - the rivalries that defined the region in the 1990s - are now being pushed aside by shared security priorities. Not because they've been resolved, but because Brussels and Washington require it. That's the reality of the 21st century: NATO unifies what history divides.