Introduction: Revisiting Security in the Post-Yugoslav Space. Non-State Actors as Allies of Russian Foreign Policy

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has significantly changed the international security environment, highlighting the need for democracies to assist Ukraine in resisting the invasion and to bolster their defenses against the Kremlin’s aggressive posture. Russia’s hybrid war efforts have come under greater scrutiny after the invasion, indicating the growing need to understand and respond to Moscow’s attempts to challenge and weaken the liberal order internationally. It is against this ideational background that we produced this special section dedicated to the post-Yugoslav space, a part of Europe where Russian presence has for years been noticeable. Russia’s foothold in the region has facilitated this area of Europe becoming a space where illiberal, anti-Western narratives and agendas have become embedded into the regional mainstream (political, social, and/or media spaces). To go against the grain of top-down deliberations, these articles assume a bottom-up approach of focusing on the role of non-state actors (NSAs), whose role in Russia’s hybrid warfare in the region has remained understudied. Our case studies are guided by a single theoretical framework, bringing evidence from BiH (Republika Srpska), Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia. This introduction provides context and rationale for the present theoretical and methodological considerations on the NSAs addressed, introduces a state-of-the-art communication with and contribution to the field, and briefly reflects on the main points of each case study, summing up the research and arguing for future research directions.