ABSTRACT
Russia and China have been the two most important non-Western great powers exploiting the power vacuum left in the Western Balkans by the Western distraction. However, the interests in the region guiding these two powers are different, and so are the instruments they use. While Russia acts as a spoiler power trying to obstruct and leverage the West, China acts as an unexpected power whose prior interactions with the region were never very deep. China has emerged as the primary challenger to the West in the region, operating as a rising global power and providing a vision for the region in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is more likely that the US will roll back the influence of these two powers in the region than the EU.
