As someone from Bulgaria I still remember how the Yugoslavian war played out. NATO doesn’t seem to have any qualms in abusing weaker independent nations if their military interests require it.

Granted they just used Bulgaria’s airspace but the feeling was “we don’t give a F*ck what you think, deal with it”. Bulgaria is now _in_ NATO itself, but it wasn’t back then. There was a strong pro Russian (anti Nato) sentiment and I think that war in particular showed a lot of people what a precarious geopolitical position that actually was.