Macedonian TV producer Boris Damovski perhaps put it best: Politics in the Balkan state of Macedonia may not have hugely interested Russia in the past, “but now the bear has woken up, he’s seen the situation, and he wants to mate...with Europe!”

The coupling is clearly not consensual, yet Damovski’s quip captures a geopolitical view shared by many in the Balkans, of a revitalized Russia trying to take advantage of a distracted and vulnerable Europe.

As the European Union and NATO coax ex-Yugoslav republics toward membership, Russia is now accused of using everything from disinformation to a coup attempt to destabilize a region still haunted by the wars of the 1990s.

In Macedonia, where Damovski has helped organize ongoing, large-scale street protests against a proposed new government, critics claim Moscow is exacerbating the country’s ethnic and political divisions and turning this state of 2.1 million into a new diplomatic battleground for global powers.