Voice of America News reports: “With Russia and China increasingly aligned, Western policymakers and analysts are sounding the alarm over their influence in the Western Balkans. With so much focus on the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, they warn that the Western Balkans should not be ignored.

U.S. Representative Pete Sessions told VOA on Wednesday that Russia has been a part ‘of destabilizing the Balkans for a number of years,’ and that it has demonstrated it uses misinformation and military force to fulfill its objectives.

‘Destabilizing the Balkans is something that each of the countries there see,’ he said. ‘And they see these not only happening, but they see whether it’s a deliberate attempt to undermine these nations.’

Sessions said the United States needs to stand behind these nations and ‘work within established parameters, the EU, NATO and other organizations. … The United States needs to be front and center to say, ‘We support this, and we will stick together.’ That is what these nations need. The United States of America standing strong with them individually and as a group.’…”