Cooperation or alignment between China and Russia, has been documented by existing research, including on the Western Balkans. This paper, adds to this discussion, looking at this alignment from Kosovo perspective. A recent report by Krstinovska et.al., “Navigating Multipolarity: Southeast Europe in the EU’s China Strategy”, shows that China’s role in the region should also be assessed through the behaviour of countries in multilateral arenas, including the United Nations (UN). The report shows that countries from South East Europe “adopt divergent stances in multilateral settings. Albania, Croatia, Bulgaria, and North Macedonia generally align with Western-led initiatives critical of China, while Serbia consistently sides with Beijing and Greece remains cautious or abstains”.
The research has looked at alignment between China and Russia in the United Nations. This does not mean that China and Russia always act through formal coordination, but it does show that the UN is one of the key arenas where their positions can overlap and where regional actors can signal their wider geopolitical orientation. In this sense, this paper helps strengthen the argument that China’s presence in Southeast Europe is economic and bilateral, and has a strong multilateral dimension.
Both China and Russia have an important presence in the Western Balkans, including in economic and strategic sectors. Both countries also seem to share the view that stronger US-EU coordination in the region works against their interests. For that reason, both Moscow and Beijing benefit from weaker transatlantic unity, especially when it comes to the Western Balkans.