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North Macedonia president sees Western Balkans as European security ‘soft spot’
Speaking at Davos, North Macedonia’s president has described the Western Balkans as a soft spot in Europe’s security architecture having been targeted by influence campaigns by Russia.
President Stevo Pendarovski told an event at the World Economic Forum that Vladimir Putin’s regime had, for years, tried to provoke the people in the region.
In the past year or so, Russian fake news, propaganda and ‘hybrid threats’ has not intensified, Pendarovski explained, because Russis was fully preoccupied with countering the Western alliance, due to the war in Ukraine.
But instead, local actors – some who are ‘not quite happy’ with the peace agreements reached in the 90s – are doing that work instead.
Pendarovski says his judgement is that if…
