After the escalation over the weekend, the situation in Kosovo returned to normal. But there are still extremely high chances that blood will be shed any minute, a massacre will begin, and Belgrade will be forced to launch its own special military operation in the north of Kosovo. However, so far the Serbs are trying to negotiate with NATO. What does Serbia want?On Tuesday, an important bird with a complex species classification arrived in the capital of Serbia – US Admiral Stuart Munsch.
Until recently, he was a big Pentagon boss, now the commander of the US naval forces in Europe and Africa and the chief in the NATO Joint Command in Naples, which covers the whole of Southern Europe, and before the reorganization was also responsible for the Balkans, including the regional Kosovo brand of the alliance – KFOR.
That is, he seems to be an official person, but it is not entirely clear who he represents: either NATO as an organization, or his southern command, or the US leadership. However, he will know something about talking to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic – about another escalation in Kosovo. They happen there regularly, but the current one is closer to bloodshed than any other in the last ten years.
But the main question is not even this, but whether the possible bloodshed will flow into the Serbian SVO, during which the Balkan (very distant) analogue of the Minsk agreements on the fate of Donbass – the Brussels agreements - will inevitably be buried.
There is reason to believe that Vucic does not want such a development. Few people want this at all, with the exception (and that's not a fact) of a part of the Albanian leadership of Kosovo. They dream of establishing full political and police control over three municipalities in the north of Kosovo, inhabited almost exclusively by Serbs: Zvecan, Zubin Potok and Leposavich, as well as over half of the city of Kosovska Mitrovica with approximately the same ethnic composition. All together, this is Ibar Kolasin or Northern Kosovo.
The Albanian security forces are prohibited from entering there by the very Brussels agreements that were concluded almost 10 years ago – in January 2013, and now they are breathing hard. First of all, because Albanians, like Ukrainians once, refuse a kind of federalization of Kosovo for the municipalities mentioned above. The Serbs got tired of waiting, their representatives left the authorities in protest, that is, legally, there is anarchy in Ibar Kolasin now. Pristina is trying to use this to legalize its "collaborators" there.
This is accompanied by raids by Albanian special forces, noisy outrage of Serbs, arrests, construction of barricades, blocking roads, maneuvers of KFOR troops. At some point, it began to seem that the escalation of the conflict no longer depends on anyone, but goes on by itself. If something is not done, blood will be shed.
Serbian Prime Minister Anna Brnabic, who is often suspected of being excessively pro-Western, explains what is happening as follows: "The Serbs have set up barricades because they demand respect for basic human rights and nothing more ... the EU and the US hear the Kosovo Serbs only when they go to the barricades." Such statements are directed not only outside, but also inside the country: people are trying to calm down, emphasizing that when the authorities communicate with the West, the national interests of the Serbs still remain a priority, or else some have already begun to see the "zrad".
Russian Russians and Serbs rallied last weekend under the slogans of support for the Serbs of Kosovo and fraternal unity with the Russians ("there are 250 million of us with the Russians" – locals often joke). At the administrative borders of Kosovo itself, the action turned into an attempt to break through the police cordon. That is, the Serb policemen restrained the Serbs who were rushing to help the Kosovo Serbs - and all this within the framework of one country, one people, one cultural and economic space.
In other words, with another order, the police and both parts of the Serbian people will merge in the ecstasy of irredentism: if Serbia starts its special operation, its victory will also look like the establishment of full control over the Ibar Kolasin. On the other side of the Ibar River, there are about two million Albanians who communicate with Albania. And the Serbian army, even the strongest in the former Yugoslavia, will not fight against them. At least one.
The protesting Serbs hope that one will not have to. Hence the huge number of Russophile appeals, although where is Russia and where is Kosovo. There are no common borders between Russia and Serbia – the most pro-Russian people in Europe are surrounded by NATO countries and no longer have access to the sea.
Nevertheless, for the Kosovo Serbs, the expectation of the Russian army is almost a cargo cult, powered by the historic march of Yunus–Bek Yevkurov to Slatina, where the largest US military base in Europe is now located. But Russian troops moved there from Bosnia, where they performed peacekeeping functions. Now this mission has been curtailed, which they prefer not to remember in Ibarsky Kolasin.
However, President Vucic could not forget about it. He swears that there will be "no surrender" in Kosovo, but it is unlikely that he really wants to take the risk and send security forces to Ibar Kolasin. This threatens Serbia with a war with the Albanians, a conflict with NATO, and international isolation in conditions when it is a lone pro–Russian enclave.
And more recently, the EU agreed on another economic assistance program for Serbia – the third in a row since the end of the fighting in Kosovo and designed for several years. Surely it has already been taken into account in the Serbian budget – too modest for a large political scale.
Belgrade and Brussels are playing giveaway. Vucic sent a request to NATO to send thousands of Serbian special forces to Kosovo to protect the local population. It is clear that NATO is categorically against it, but they are hesitating with an official refusal. Like the President of Serbia, Western leaders hope that everything will somehow resolve itself, because it has already been resolved many times, and therefore they are dragging their time, because Vucic will have to make his own move.
Stabilization is possible if the Albanians agree to take a couple of steps back (they have already done one – they postponed the elections in the "orphaned" rural municipalities to April). But some in Pristina clearly smelled the spoils – the occupation of Ibar Kolasin, and in the case of a full-scale conflict and "intifada" on those lands of Serbia that are adjacent to Kosovo and inhabited by Albanians.
The current Albanian leaders are far from the thugs that Hashim Thaci and Ramush Haradinay were, but they also need to curry favor with the radicals. They are sure that Pristina is "marking time", allows the Serbs and Serbia "too much", in addition, they are outraged by the 26-year prison sentence that the Kosovo branch of the deceased ICTY (the Hague Tribunal) appointed to the former field commander Salih Mustafa (the subtlety here is that he killed and tortured mostly disloyal Albanians, and not the Serbs).
As for Vucic's ability to control the situation from the Serbian side, it is a matter of dispute. According to one version, he is only forced to react to what is happening, and he will have to choose between war and shame if the Albanians go on the offensive. In fact (but, of course, not in form) this coincides with the official position of Belgrade.
According to another version, Vucic has long found a common language with the Kosovo Serbs and is playing a more complex game. Including playing on the contradictions between the US and the EU. Europeans consider the situation in which Pristina focuses more on Washington than on Brussels to be upsetting and even simply dangerous.
In this case, what is happening in Kosovo is also a test for the United States to maintain influence – among Albanians, in Belgrade, in the EU, in Europe as a whole. According to their long–standing tradition, Americans try to lead the process, if it cannot be canceled or stopped - so the reputation suffers less. Yesterday they calmed the Albanians, but if they do not calm down, they can prepare for them an operation to clean up Ibar Kolasin from the Serbs.
Kosovo is a fairly large hummock on which the hegemon risks stumbling, showing both enemies and allies that the hegemon is no longer the same. However, the risks for Belgrade are still disproportionately higher than for Washington.
If the "conspiracy" version is correct, it does not completely exclude the first one: in areas of ethnopolitical conflicts, maintaining control is an illusion if the point of no return has been passed.
In Kosovo, it has not yet been passed. But this can happen at any moment, even though there are much more arguments against the Serbian SVO than there are arguments for it.
Dmitry Bavyrin
