Moscow has a new problem in the Balkans and it is called defence cooperation. Yuri Pilipson, director of the South-East Europe department at the Russian foreign ministry, described the trilateral declaration between Croatia, Albania and Kosovo in an interview with TASS as a „military quasi-bloc” destabilising the region.

The document was signed in Tirana in March 2025 by the defence ministers of the three countries. It provides for cooperation in the defence industry, joint procurement, interoperability of forces and data sharing. What it does not provide for is an alliance - there is no collective defence clause, no obligation for anyone to come to anyone's aid. Legally speaking, it is a cooperation framework, not Article 5.

When cooperation becomes an „axis”

Pilipson objected specifically to the development of the defence industry, to joint procurement and to data-sharing systems, and in particular to the strengthening of Kosovo's military capacity, invoking UN Security Council Resolution 1244. In his words, „the creation of a closed Zagreb-Tirana-Pristina axis represents a destabilising factor”.

Moscow openly stated that it shares Serbian concerns about the supposed „anti-Serbian character” of the arrangement. Serbia did indeed object sharply to the declaration when it was signed.

A vocabulary with a false bottom

The choice of words is worth noticing. Three countries buying equipment together are a „quasi-bloc”. Three countries sharing data form an „axis”. That is vocabulary with weight in the Balkans - „axis” is not a neutral term here, and Pilipson knows it.

It is also interesting that two of the three signatories are NATO members. Croatia has been in the Alliance since 2009, Albania since the same year. Their defence cooperation with a third country in the region can hardly be a bigger military fact than the membership itself. If that is the problem, then the problem is fifteen years old, not dated to last March.

What this means for us

Macedonia is not a signatory to this declaration. But it has been a NATO member since 2020 and sits precisely in the middle of the region Moscow says is being destabilised. Every line drawn across the Balkans - an „axis” on one side, „concern” on the other - leaves us somewhere on that line, whether we want it or not.

The question that remains is simple: if regional defence cooperation between neighbours is destabilising, what exactly would be stabilising? The answer to that question usually says more about whoever framed the problem than about the problem itself.