The US State Department will hire specialists to train border guards in the Balkans

As noted in the description, the EXBS program trains border guards and law enforcement officials to detect and stop the illegal movement of weapons, and also provides equipment for international checkpoints to check suspicious cargo.

“The purpose of this order is to provide coordinated logistics services, including the selection of specialized specialists, to support activities under the EXBS program in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro, hereinafter referred to as the Balkans,” the statement reads. State Department document. 

The agency is ready to provide the executors of the order with about $1.2 million. 

It is planned that the contractors will help, among other things, to conduct specialized consultations in order to thus increase the capacity of partners to implement the sanctions.

The document emphasizes that this funding should contribute to a number of goals, including advancing the strategic interests of the United States and "protecting against threats" from China and Russia. 

In particular, we are talking about increasing the resistance of American allies to “Russian malicious influence” and counteracting the Chinese strategy of military-civilian integration. 

According to the director of the Franklin Roosevelt Foundation for the Study of the United States at Moscow State University, Yuri Rogulev, the task of most of these State Department programs is to strengthen American influence.

At the same time, the expert added that Washington views Moscow and Beijing as rivals in the Balkans. 

“The Balkans is a region of a strategic nature.

It has always been called the powder keg of Europe.

There has been rivalry since ancient times.

Now the United States aims to split all the Balkan peoples into the smallest states in order to establish their control there, ”the political scientist commented in a conversation with RT. 

Earlier it became known about Washington's intention to allocate up to $25 million to support the mission of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in the Balkan countries.