Analysts watching the international system in recent months describe it in one and the same way - the world is being divided again into spheres of influence. A three-way game between Washington, Moscow and Beijing, in which the European Union no longer even sits at the table - it waits in the hallway.

The comparison with Yalta 1945 is appearing ever more often. Then, the big three (Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill) decided the future of Eastern Europe without the presence of the countries that became the object of those decisions. The same geometry as today. The same kind of treatment for the countries on the table - but without the right to speak.

Donald Trump sees geopolitics through the prism of „spheres of influence of the great powers". That means China gets the Pacific, Russia is left Eastern Europe, and the US gets Greenland, the Panama Canal and the western hemisphere. In this model the EU is not a player - it is the terrain.

As for concrete moves - Russia is openly interfering in the domestic politics of Czechia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland. Partly through media campaigns, partly through financing of selected political figures, partly through direct intelligence work. All those countries are now in internal crises that their intelligence services trace back to Moscow.

China and Russia, in turn, are fighting over Central Asia - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan. It's about infrastructure, mines and gas pipelines. A race the European public doesn't follow because it looks far away, but which has a direct effect on energy prices in Europe.

What does this mean for the Balkans? First - we are watched by all three, with no particular weight for any of them. Moscow treats us as a „zone of cultural proximity". Beijing treats us as a „bridge" to the EU - with Chinese investments in Serbia, Albania, Macedonia. Washington treats us as „a problem to be kept shut". None of them treats us as a partner.

Second - when the EU loses international weight, it will have less time and interest to finish the enlargement process. And in an era when Brussels worries about whether it will survive the winter, we are once again in the waiting room. Only now the waiting room leads nowhere - because no one is sure whether the EU will exist as a project in the same form in ten years.

Is this a „new Yalta"? Not quite - because the players are not sitting together. Each of them decides on his own and then informs the others. A Yalta without Yalta. And in that Yalta, we are again on the visitor benches.