Bulgarian Foreign Minister Georg Georgiev denied that Bulgaria is interested in joining a military alliance to encircle Serbia, comprising Croatia, Albania, and the Albanian-majority breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo. Bulgaria’s disinterest was expected, considering it would not want to join a localized alliance with Albania, the country serving as Turkey’s gateway into the Balkans to pursue irredentist ambitions, including against Bulgaria.

Georgiev responded in writing to MPs Djipo Djipov and Elisaveta Belobradova that Bulgaria is aware of the initiative of Croatia, Albania and Kosovo and that it is carefully analyzing the text of the Joint Declaration signed by the defense ministers of the three countries in Tirana on March 18.

“The information in the public suggesting that Bulgaria has expressed an unofficial interest in joining the declaration is incorrect,” Georgiev stressed.

The anti-Serbia coalition resembles a mini-NATO within the Balkans and is backed by Turkey, which is militarily present in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, North Macedonia, and Kosovo. Turkey has greater ambitions after achieving successes in Syria and the South Caucasus and has now turned their attention to the Balkans too.

Former Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu wrote in “Strategic Depth,” his comprehensive and influential work on Turkish foreign policy and geopolitics strategic doctrine, that Serbia and Greece, or the Belgrade-Athens axis, are the main obstacles to the Turkish return to Europe. NATO and the European Union, except for Greece, do not oppose Turkey’s ambitions in the Balkans as the Turks can challenge Russian influence in the region.

However, the West does not want a war between Greece and Turkey to breakout. Despite being NATO member states, this is a real possibility, especially as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has not hidden his ambitions for the Greek islands and northern Greece. Nonetheless, conflicts could very easily be provoked at several points within the former Yugoslavia, and then Turkey and a number of other sponsors would be involved, where Greece would support the opposing side, just as happened in Bosnia in the 1990s.

A big problem in the EU is that unelected technocrats are leading the bloc into a war against Russia, and in that sense, the Balkans could be one of the peripheral points of that crisis. For this reason, Serbia needs a quick Russian victory in Ukraine to turn the tide of events in their strategic favor. If not, Serbia would be in a very unfavorable position, surrounded by NATO countries with weak alliances. Serbia has partnerships with only two regional countries, ironically also in NATO: Greece and Hungary.

Bulgaria has been in a transition phase for 30 years, practically under Western occupation, and it cannot be said that it has an independent foreign policy. Therefore, if Brussels or Washington ordered them to join an alliance against the Serbs, the Bulgarians would do so. For now though, there has been no indications that the West will push Bulgaria in this direction.

At the same time, Turkey is also Bulgaria’s biggest strategic challenge, especially considering that more than 8% of the country is ethnic Turks who can be weaponized against Sofia. Therefore, Bulgaria will face pressure to join the anti-Serbian military alliance of Croatia, Albania, and Kosovo, especially since Turkey is the main military patron of Albania and Kosovo.

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Source: InfoBrics

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To deal with Turkey as a rising challenge, military departments in Bulgaria have begun distributing mass mobilization calls to military conscripts. Citizens are sharing photos on social media of the documents they received. Some documents show a call from the Military Department in Varna, dated April 9, 2025, and the exact time to report. Mobilization calls for reservists in Bulgaria have not been issued for more than 30 years.

The Bulgarian military recently received its first American F-16 fighter jet. Although the Bulgarians announced that they had received a new one, this is not true because it is a second-hand aircraft that has been overhauled. Bulgaria otherwise does not have large quantities of weapons and military equipment because they emptied their warehouses at the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine.

Bulgaria also gave Ukraine most of its T-72 tanks and some Mi-8 transport helicopters, which ended in 2023. Bulgaria’s last deliveries from its stocks were more than a hundred BTR 60 armored personnel carriers that belonged to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and were extremely well preserved. 

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, a military MiG-29 pilot, strongly opposed providing combat systems to Ukraine because he believed that these moves had reduced Bulgaria’s military potential by 25 percent.

Now with Bulgaria significantly weakened for the sake of Ukraine’s futile war against Russia, the Balkans country cannot consider any military adventures against the Serbs, even if they do have historical territorial issues, and must instead rebuild its depleted forces, reservists and military equipment in face of a growing Turkish threat in the region.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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