This fanfiction is considered outdated, altough i would like to keep it. Here is the new fanfiction which will be updated in the future.















After the "Concrete Curtain" was built, Eastern Europe was left on it's own. Countries abandoned by the ECA fell into chaos, with the exeption of few which adapted and used the chance to turn to Russia as a new strategic partner. When the European Union collapsed, Serbia was left alone with the pro-western government which was not willing to adapt to the changes. With the vain hope of re-establishing ties with the West, the government continued its work. Having lost access to the inner-European market and the generous regional development funds of the old Union, the economy of Serbia was seriously damaged, making it impact the citizens like never before. Protests took place all across the country, while the crowds demanded that the current government steps down and new elections to be organised.


Picture from the anti-government protests in 2033.

Most of the ministers resigned, while the president, premier and a few ministers refused, claiming that they were legitimized by a democratic election and that they would continue leading the country until their mandate expires. The claims were met with public rage, which called the army to force the rest of the government to leave.
When the army finally decided to respond, tanks and other military vehicles were met with cheering crouds of people. After the military stormed the government building, they detained the officials and transported them to the city jail with a helicopter before the croud could even notice that it is over.

The next day, the military made a statement, calling the people to get back to their daily lives until the next elections are organised. There were only two candidates on the next presidental elections. The first candidate was the foreign minister who had stepped down during the protests, Dragan Stubasic. His moderate policy relied on the already existing system, claiming that the ECA would soon see the error of its decision and welcome Serbia back among the family of Europe. The second candidate was the representative of the recently founded Serbian Reformist Party, Stojan Milovanovic. He claimed that Serbia had to forget about the Western traitors who had callously left the country to collapse and pick another, more reliable partners with a shared history: The Russian Federation.

*The new Government

The new Serbian governent elected after the collapse of EU was lead by the President Stojan Milovanovic. He was elected by vast majority of votes, and his political party, the Serbian Reformist Party, had the support of around 80% of the Serbian voters. The primary reason for this landslide victory was the mere fact that Milovanovic was guaranteed to be the polar opposite of his predecessors which were now regarded with nigh-universal contempt for their failure.

While EU still existed, Serbia was mostly exporting raw materials and food products while importing most of its consumer products from the rest of Europe. Only loans given by the EU kept the budget of the country stabilized until the organisation collapsed. After the end of the EU, Serbia was left alone and ECA received the materials for its reconstruction directly from Russia. There were no more loans given by the West, and the only thing which kept Serbia's economy from sinking too fast was food production which was still very undeveloped during the late 2020s. The national debt was high, and most of it was owed to the West. After the military coup, the new president of Serbia and his government started developing agriculture and focused on food production in order to sustain as much of Serbia by its own economic power as possible, which helped in satisfying the basic needs of the citizens. After a few meetings between the Serbian and Russian government ministers, financial aid from Russian Federation started arriving to Serbia by January 2035. In the same year, the vast majority of Serbia's exports were directed to Russia and the allied countries in the Eastern Europe.

The Serbian government wrote off the debt of Serbia to EU, under justification that the Union had collapsed and that its claims were no longer valid. Serbia's military soon started growing stronger because of some domestic contracts with the local arms factories which also produce military vehicles. Serbia's military technology wasn't as advanced as those of the world powers, but it was still the most well-maintained in the region. With that in mind, the government started financing scientific researches which lead to improoving of the Serbian technology in both military and civilian sector. The Serbian budget started growing and the living standards of the citizens started improving, which secured the second victory of Stojan Milovanovic's Serbian Reformist Party on the next elections.



*Kosovo

Russia started supplying Serbia with military equipment and vehicles, with the first three shipments arriving by the end of the year. In 2037, the President addressed to the nation with what is now considered as an historic speach:

„Good day to all good people of our beautiful country Serbia. I have promised that we will stabilize the economy and make our country great as it once was. I have also promised that we will make sure that the occupied territories of our country are liberated as soon as we are ready. Now, our economy has been stabilised and our military is strong, so I am proud to announce that the time has come.
I gave the order to our troops to enter the occupied territory of Kosovo and Metohija and liberate it from the occupiers. We hope that the they will see that resistance is futile, so that a needless loss of life can be averted. Our army will use force only as a last resort.
May the God bless all good people of Serbia.“

After the speach, Serbian military forces entered the territory on 30th April with little resistance. The well-equipped Serbian army took control over the entire territory within three months, with a few clashes with the local police of the militia forces. There were some casualties, and the move caused a massive exodus of Albanians from Kosovo to Albania and Italy, which presented the ECA with a major humanitarian dilemma due to its strict emigration policies. In the end, many Albanians found refuge in Italy. During the Russo-European War, many of them would sign up for the Italian army out of vain hope that this would give them the chance to liberate what they consider their homeland.

During the next few years, Albanians who decided to stay in Serbia were treated as "potential threats to national security", and they had to submit to monthly searches by the police or else they would be deported.



*Civil war in FYROM

In the same time period, the Former Yugoslavic Republic Of Macedonia (or FYROM for short) was almost in anarchy, while the government had little control over the country and the organized gangs, mafias and other illegal organisations ruled the streets. In 2038, the civil war in FYROM started between the Albanian majority on the west which declared it's independence, and the regular government and the people on the east of the country. The police forces on the west, which were mostly Albanians, refused to listen to the orders of the official government and started fighting for independence. The civil war took many lives on both sides, but as ever so often, the casualties were mostly civilians.

The world powers didn't want to interfere, so they decided not to aid any side and let them sort it out on their own. However, the Serbian president has declared that Serbia will not remain neutral if the violence doesn't stop soon. After a three day ultimatum, he gave the order to enter the war and support the legitimate government of FYROM to restore order. Serbian Special forces entered from the North, meeting no organised resistance all the way trough the east side of the country. Fierce fighting was taking place near towns of Skopje, Tetovo and Kumanovo, so the Serbian military got an order to retake and secure the west part of Skopje. Serbian army started shelling the enemy positions which drove the terrorists out of their hiding and forced them to retreat further on the west. Eventually, the president of FYROM announced that the terrorists are neutralised, and he thanked the Serbian army for assistance.

The civil war lasted for around two months, and the west part of the country was in ruins. After Serbian army which was involved in the fighting came back to Serbia, President Milovanovic payed a visit to his FYROM counterpart in Skopje. The country wasn't able to recover on it's own, and Serbia was still in development, so the president of Serbia offered FYROM to integrate into Serbia. Several weeks later, the government of FYROM signed the agreement with Serbia in Belgrade, as they had no other options.

In September 2038. the anthem of Serbia was changed in celebration of the merger. The anthem "God of Justice" was replaced with an older, revolutionary anthem "Востани Сербие" ( "Arise Serbia" ) written by Dositej Obradovic in 1804:


In late 2040, Serbia reacted to a call for help by the Republika Srpska and subsequently annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina via military force, with a few battles which took place near the cities of Sarajevo, Tuzla and Sivici. The local security forces could not compete with the Serbian armed forces, so they eventually surrendered. At the same time, Croatia and Slovenia, the first countries which had broken out of Yugoslavia during its collapse in the early 1990s, became wary of Serbia's expansion and entered a series of long, mostly fruitless negotiations with the ECA. Whilst they would remain neutral during the Russo-European War in order to consolidate the protection of their own borders, the two countries maintained a pro-European political stance and eventually united into the Adriatic Union of Croatia and Slovenia during the war in order to deter foreign incursions and settle their long-standing territorial dispute.

The President of Serbia then focused on diplomacy, meeting with the Greek President Georgios Petrou, the Bulgarian President Daniel Ivanov and the President of Montenegro Lazar Novkovic. Montenegro signed a document which integrated it into Serbia three months later, arguing that a fractured Balkan was a weak Balkan in the eyes of the great powers. As a result, the Serbian constitution was reformed into a federal system which granted the new territories a degree of autonomy and self-rule as long as they would remain part of the larger Serbian state and accept the decisions of the federal government. Soon after that, Serbia signed a permanent military alliance with the Russian Federation. With the same aggreement, Russia was allowed to operate port facilities in Budva for repairing their ships which are on patrol in the Mediterranean Sea.

In 2042, the President of Serbia Stojan Milovanovic revealed his newly made ideology of a „Balkan Federation“, which would be an economic, military and scientific union of Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria in an effort to capitalise on the good, historically grown relationships between the three countries. It was recieved with great approval among the people of those nations, especially in Greece, whose government party, the populist 'Magale Hellas Movement', further expanded on the proposal with a concept of a new Byzantine Empire. Ever since its rise to power amidst the chaos that gripped Greece after the downfall of the EU, the party enaced a mix of syndicalist economic policies under a thick coat of militarism and pan-Balkan nationalism which many ECA leaders openly decried as a quasi fascist ideology fuelled by revanchist feelings against the West.

The Greek proposal was discussed, but postponed for the foreseeable future by the more moderate President Milovanovic, who first wanted to realize his own vision in the form of a confederation of sovereign states which would eventually transform itself into a federal state, a process which in and of itself would likely require decades of work. Tragically, the President did not live to see the realisation of his dream: In 2043, he was assassinated in the city of Pristina when a commercial UAV with an explosive payload crashed into his motorcade.
After the assassination, the number of security forces on Kosovo increased, which made a certan number of Albanians leave.


*After the assasination

The assasination of Stojan Milovanovic caused public rage in Serbia, and the support for his ideology roise even more rapidly after his death. There were a few theories about who organised the assassination. According to the most popular - even though no less unproven - story, the ECA organised the attack as an act of revenge for Milovanovic's expansion of Serbia and as a pre-emptive strike against his plan for a regional unification, using local Albanian militant groups as a proxy to execute the attack. However, none of those theories were confirmed, and the details about the assasination remain classified.

Dusan Pasic was named the successor of Stojan Milovanovic. He was a younger man who vowed to continue the policy of the murdered president.
Dusan Pasic was elected in early 2044. with a solid percentage of 73% for his party. A meeting with the presidents of Greece and Bulgaria took place in Belgrade in the same year, with the Russian Prime Minister Valentina Baranova attending as well. Several new deals were made, including the agreement according to which Russia was going to send aid to Greece and Bulgaria to help them stabilize the economy and ensure security despite the country's own economic troubles in the wake of the recent recession.

As situation in Serbia improved, many more contracts with Russia were signed. Serbia was exporting it's products to Russia, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, while Russia was supplying Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria with surplus military equipment, security systems and vehicles to restore its economic momentum. On the Balkan Peninsula, Serbia was seen as an oasis in the desert. The rapid development of agriculture and industry secured Serbia's position in the list of top eight food producing countries in Europe.

After another year of tiresome legal proceedings, the Balkan Confederation was officially formed in January 2045 in the city of Cetinje. From now on, the leaders of Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria would attend regular diplomatic meetings in order to establish shared institutions such as student and labor exchange programmes, common industrial standards, cross-border law enforcement initiatives as well as a shared Balkan citizenship which would allow all citizens to cross the borders between member states without any kind of controls. Later that year, Romania was accepted in Balkan Union after a series of meetings with the officials of Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria and Russia.

The Russian Federation declared war on the European Continental Alliance as a reaction to an alleged commando raid on a Russian missile base in Kaliningrad, citing the incident as the final offense in a series of unwarranted aggressions by the Europeans. In the Balkan region, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania all followed up on their pre-established alliances with Russia while Greece allowed the Russian Black Sea fleet to move through its territorial waters. Russia's allies provided a large amount of logistical and material support while some of them also dispatched volunteer units to fight under the Russian flag, many of whom saw action under General Sergei Ruslanovich Yakov and his Legion Of Solidarity.

During some of the war's most devastating battles in 2046 and 2047, both Serbia and Greece seized the opportunity of the moment to dispatch their official forces to Albania, accusing its government of acting as a proxy for possible ECA incursions into the region. Many Albanians who had signed up for the Italian army during the previous years deserted in order to return to their homeland but their efforts were in vain: The small country could not stand against the coordinated, two-pronged attack from the North, East and South and was subsequently absorbed into Serbia and Greece respectively. As the Third World War continued, the Balkan nations remained true to their Russian partners and deployed some of their forces to protect Russian supply lines in the occupied European territories further north-west.


The Confederation was never stronger, morale was high and the nations were the closest than they ever were before. During the war in Europe, the Balkan itself became, for once, a largely peaceful region where the economy was slowly growing and the people were proud that the vision of their grand unifier, Stojan Milovanovic, did not die with him.











Special thanks to MARS for helping me.
Credits for making the new flag go to MARS.

Wow, an amazing fan-fic which I believe is already canon. Really nice work! (I love the flag; did you design it?)

I did provide him with plenty of rewrites and narrative advice and even though I'm still not sure whether it'd be in any way plausible under realistic circumstances, I did like it as a story and it's overall unintrusive enough and largely compatible with the established situation.

Excellent work of art, I really enjoyed this fanfict, very detailed and depth in ROTR storyline and describes very well the situation in the Europe and Balkans, congratulations The General. I also liked the banner of Confederation - reminds of medieval coats of arms.

None of the pictures used here are made by me.
The flag is fictional, i found it on google pictures and i tought i can use it as a BC flag because it seems to suit it. The map is made by MARS. I am thinking to add some other pictures in the future too.

This story has been re-written two times, because i had to delete certan parts of it to make it compatible with the official story, but it still contains all the important parts of the original idea.
And the story about BC is not over yet, i'll wait to see the rest of the official story so i can make sure that my fanfic doesn't contradict it.

Thanks, i'm glad that you like it.

Seriously one of the best and detailed fan fic I've ever read here.

Good job, man.

Thanks.

Nice job, liked it.

Glad you like it.

I see on the map that Romania and Moldova are one united country now. I'm citizen of the Moldova, the relationship between our countries not very good.

Could be a mistake, but after all, both are allies of Russia. And if Moldova isn't, they would make it become an ally.

Flag - good; representation of the "orthodox twoheaded eagle"
balkan confederacy - good, plausable
russian aid - extremely probable (even in RL)
however I have a few notes to make about the part concerning west balkan states - croatia, bosnia and slovenia
you write that Republic of Srpska asks for help, ok thats realistic, and the annexation of said Republic is realistic, but nor the muslim nor the catholic part of bosnia would be annexed to serbia, moreso the catholics wouldnt go than the muslims, and there would be blood, and croatia wouldnt stand by and watch a slaughter happen, so the war would escalate just watching from the catholic-orthodox perspective
not to mention that the GLA is mostly comprised of muslim extremists who would love to reek havoc once again in Europe, and would gladly come to the aid of the muslim population in Bosnia, also the extremist muslim part of Serbia called Sandzak that would probably create a virtual shitstorm with GLA aid, even tho the GLA would be dismantled during the formative years of the balkan conf, there are always rogue cells, rogue clerics that have the men and the means to do what needs (not) be done
in my view the balkans would play a integral, well, more bloody than integral, part of the WW3 ROTR world

all in all, you did give a pink, but well written, scenario of the balkans

Excellent stuff. Love the Neo-Byzantine flag. One tiny little quip, the confederation has a very large active military. Considering the USA has a population of 300 million and only fields around a million men. Perhaps reduce the number a but, because keeping almost 3 million men mobolized is probably beyond the logisitcal capacity of the Confederation. But otherwise fascinating read.

^I think any country/confederation can muster more than available troops when their people need it.

I also don't understand about number of troops in every army. It's totally clear about China's numbers due to their population more than a 1 billion, but why Russia have more troops than USA and ECA? Or it is only number of active troops, but in time westerners can mobilize a lot more than russians, right?

The US isn't actually fighting a war though. During WWII, the US fielded 16 million men.

The numbers during the loading screens have been the subject of internaldiscussions a few times in the past. At the end, we agreed to operate under the assumption that this is the number of active full-time service troops that are ready to immediately enter the fight by the start of WWIII in 2045. It is -not- taking into account second line forces, paramilitaries, auxiliaries, irregulars and, most important of all within the context of the Russo-European War, additional troops that are mobilised from reserves. This is to day that Russia did not fight the entirety of WWIII with little more than three million men; it is to say that these three million men made up the first contingent that invaded Europe, suffered attrition over the years and got replaced/reinforced by a yet unknown number of troops from the reserve.

That was the assumption I worked with also that these were pre-war military numbers. Again minor quip.

You have to remember that Balkan, like the rest EU-abandoned east Europe had big problems, while Serbia managed to organise and get a self-supporting economy, where it's not depending on any other country when it comes to everyday needs of it's citizens.
Republick of Srpska asks for help, Serbia answers and they integrate, while annexing the rest of B&H. There were resistance movements, but even the civilian poppulation was in poor shape, with lack of basic things. The GLA had their own problems, and they would have a way to get involved.
Croatia couldn't stand up to Serbia, because they would give Serbia a reason to start attacking them too.
Note that Serbia gained FYROM, Montenegro and B&H accourding to the official cannon story which was made before i started this fanfiction, so i only made up the story how it happaned.

Sorry for not answering sooner comrade.

The BC is based mostly on the need to maintain stability, within and aboard. The economy is designed in the way the citizens have everything they need to live and work, and the army has their basic needs satisfied. However, there is a notable investment in science, mainly military research.
Russia and Serbia have also signed a number of agreenments, among which was the one about scientific cooperation.

I actually forgot to ask this earlier, but I might as well now that we're at it: What does the writing on the flag actually stand for?

It means : "Jesus Christ is victorious".

Great job,nicely done