A US-brokered peace deal in Ukraine that legitimises Russian territorial gains would risk reopening old fault lines in the Western Balkans, emboldening Serbia and weakening the European Union’s credibility as a guarantor of regional stability, according to a new report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
The analysis, written by ECFR senior policy fellow Engjellushe Morina, argues that the outcome of the war in Ukraine is no longer just a question for Kyiv and Moscow but a test case for how borders are treated across Europe – including in fragile regions such as Kosovo, Bosnia & Herzegovina and the wider Balkans.
“A Russia-Ukraine peace deal that capitulates to Putin risks destabilising the Western Balkans, emboldening Serbian territorial claims and undermining EU credibility,” the report said.
With US-led diplomacy intensifying as 2025 draws to a close, Morina warns that any settlement that rewards Russia for using force would send a powerful signal far beyond Ukraine. “Any settlement that legitimises Russia’s use of force to alter its borders would further destabilise Ukraine and have negative repercussions in the Western Balkans,” she wrote.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has insisted that Kyiv will not give up more territory to Russia, a position Morina says is firmly rooted in international law, which holds that “borders cannot be changed by force”.
But she argues that the current US approach to negotiations risks sidelining those principles. The talks have “hardly mentioned multilateralism, or the rules and regulations which govern international order”, instead focusing on “handing Russia the territorial changes it has achieved by force”. (The paper was published before the US military operation in Venezuela, which sparked accusations that Washington had breached international law.)
Such an outcome, the report said, would have dangerous knock-on effects for Europe’s “eastern neighbourhood” – including Georgia and Moldova – as well as in unresolved disputes in the Western Balkans, particularly between Serbia and Kosovo.
“If Russia ‘wins’ in Ukraine, the Western Balkans will be in trouble,” Morina wrote. In that scenario, Serbia could be encouraged to revive territorial claims, urging countries that recognise Kosovo’s borders to instead see the Serb-dominated north as part of Serbia.
She added that Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, might also be tempted to push for Bosnia’s Serb entity, Republika Srpska, to be folded into Serbia.
Kosovo in the crosshairs
At the centre of those concerns is northern Kosovo, a Serb-majority area that has long been a flashpoint. The EU is trying to broker a normalisation of relations between Belgrade and Pristina, but Morina warned that this delicate process could unravel if global norms on borders are weakened.
“If the US allows a peace deal that gives Russia more Ukrainian territory, or if the EU fails to stop US president Donald Trump from inflaming regional tensions, Vucic might be emboldened to pursue a land grab in Kosovo’s north,” the report said.
Such a move would “undermine Nato and weaken the EU” and would likely enjoy “Putin’s support”, Morina added.
The north of Kosovo remains “in limbo”, she wrote, with Serbia seeking to maintain influence over the local Serb population and Kosovo’s government insisting that the area must be governed under Pristina’s authority. That standoff has helped keep the region volatile, highlighted by a deadly Serb paramilitary attack in the village of Banjska in September 2023.
The report also takes aim at the changing role of the United States under President Donald Trump’s second term. Washington, once the main architect of peace in the Balkans through Nato and diplomacy, is now more focused on commercial interests, according to Morina.
The latest US National Security Strategy says “the United States will prioritise commercial diplomacy”, a shift that she argues puts economic gains ahead of geopolitical stability.
Trump, who has repeatedly portrayed himself as a global “peacekeeper”, has even claimed he “managed to stop the war between Kosovo and Serbia”, with US strategy documents listing the dispute among conflicts he has supposedly resolved.
Morina said this raised the risk that Trump could push for a quick, headline-grabbing deal in the Balkans, just as he did during his first term, when his envoy backed a controversial “land-swap” proposal between Kosovo and Serbia.
That plan, which would have traded Serb-majority areas in northern Kosovo for Albanian-majority areas in southern Serbia, ultimately failed. But Morina warned that similar ideas could resurface if Washington again prioritises speed and optics over long-term stability.
EU under pressure
The report argues that the EU remains “indispensable” in stabilising the Western Balkans, largely because of its power to offer membership. But that leverage is weakening as enlargement stalls and public trust in Brussels erodes.
“Without delivering tangible benefits, the prospect of further European integration will lose its remaining credibility among candidate countries,” Morina wrote, pushing them to look instead to Washington or Moscow for support.
She said EU member states now face a strategic choice: either “retain ownership of Balkan geopolitics” or “stand by as Washington steps in”. Decisions taken in 2026, she argued, would be “decisive” for the future of Kosovo, Serbia and the wider region.
France and Germany, in particular, need to keep pressure on Belgrade and Pristina to implement the EU-brokered “Agreement on the path to normalisation”, while also demonstrating that Europe can still deliver on security and integration.
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