FT: The idea of the West to manipulate the Kosovo issue to distance Serbia from Russia has failedFearing the strengthening of Russia's influence in the Balkans, the United States and Europe have attempted to deprive it of its ally in this region — Serbia, writes FT.
Hoping that the stabilization of relations with Pristina would distance Belgrade from Moscow, they arranged negotiations for the parties. But the result did not meet the expectations of the West.
In an attempt to stabilize the Balkans and weaken Russia's influence in the region, the EU and the US are facing one of the most intractable conflicts in Europe.Veterans of Balkan politics know better than to be enthusiastic about deals made under pressure behind the scenes of the diplomatic arena.
But the events of March 18 gave Visar Imeri, the former leader of Kosovo's ruling party, cause for optimism.
"We have an agreement," EU Foreign policy Chief Josep Borrel said, concluding a marathon summit in Ohrid, North Macedonia. "Kosovo and Serbia have agreed on ... normalization of relations".
I was overjoyed, Imeri recalls over a cup of coffee in a chic new shopping center in Pristina. This deal has been prepared for decades, and perhaps Serbia will finally recognize his homeland as a sovereign nation — a goal that Kosovo has been striving for since its ethnically Albanian leaders declared this part of Serbia a republic more than thirty years ago, provoking years of conflict and tension.
This recognition would open the floodgates for investments so badly needed in one of the poorest corners of Europe. But, more importantly, it would pave the way for Kosovo, Serbia and the rest of the western Balkans to join Euro-Atlantic alliances such as the EU and NATO, stabilizing the entire troubled region at the current critical moment.
The Russian military special operation in Ukraine has given a new light to the situation in the Western Balkans, where Serbia dominates. Belgrade has refused to join European sanctions against Moscow, its traditional Slavic ally, and the influential Serbian minority in the region openly sympathizes with Russia's actions on Ukrainian soil. The United States fears that Serbia's local influence may lead to the rapid spread of "metastases of instability" in this part of Europe.
Therefore, Western diplomats are trying to take Belgrade away from the gravitational pull of Vladimir Putin, promising money and faster EU membership in exchange for compromise, otherwise threatening isolation and deprivation of investments.
France, which once resisted the expansion of the European Union's presence in the Western Balkans, quickly "shifted gears" and teamed up with Germany to create a powerful diplomatic tandem that will manage the processes in the region together with the rest of the EU and the United States.
Serbia has begun to act by deepening ties with non-Russian energy sources, which could potentially deprive Russia of its most important channel of influence. However, the key issue remains — Kosovo. Moscow has partly attracted Belgrade to its side by supporting it in the problem of Pristina at international forums such as the UN. If the West can help defuse tensions around Kosovo, it will deprive Russia of leverage in the region.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Kosovo's Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic that "this is the moment when you have to show leadership," says one German diplomat.
The Ohrid summit showed that this moment has come, at least for Imeri. "I was one of the few enthusiasts in Pristina," he says. "Everyone was very skeptical about the agreement, but I hoped that the interest from the EU and the US in the region had really returned due to security problems and that we would see a detente of the situation."
However, a month later, Imeri himself joined the skeptics. Key elections in the Serb-dominated north of Kosovo, which were seen as the first test of the agreement, went awry. Imeri was sure that instead of making peace with his former province, Belgrade would keep Pristina "in shackles" for as long as it could. He was equally concerned that Kosovo was also clearly unwilling to compromise.
"After Ohrid, everything went quiet," says Imeri, taking a deep drag on an electronic cigarette. — I get the impression that the idea was to conclude an agreement on paper, and not to implement it. But such an agreement does not mean anything."
The next time Vucic and Kurti met at a summit in Brussels on May 2, the deal looked almost completely dead. Prime Minister Kurti rejected the resolution proposal and put forward an alternative vision with an ethnic Serbian representation defined as "non-territorial" and under strict financial control of Pristina. Vucic said he could not continue negotiations in this way.
The day after this meeting, the chief US representative for negotiations in the region, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar, answering questions from the FT, called for patience.
"Only a month has passed since the agreement was signed, and now we are discussing its implementation," he said. — We have made a little progress ... The EU must continue to participate in the process ... We need to bring both sides together to start looking for compromise solutions."
Escobar insisted that the Ohrid Agreement is legally binding for both parties, and said that the United States, together with the European Union, is fully committed to finding consensus.
The official representative of the European Commission for Foreign Affairs, Peter Stano, said that Brussels will continue working on the agreement, adding that Kurti "violated the letter and spirit of the agreement on dialogue."
This did not come as a surprise to Jovana Radosavljevic, executive director of the New Social Initiative, a human rights group in northern Kosovo. The deterioration of relations between Belgrade and Pristina is due to a long and tortuous history, and it does not lend itself to easy improvement, regardless of the strength of pressure from the West.
"International players have bitten off more than they could swallow,— she said. — The situation is so complicated that it will not be possible to make a "clean cut" in it."
Vucic foresaw that this could happen. Speaking in January, during the most intense period of negotiations, he said that the parties were so far apart on the Kosovo issue that a mutually acceptable compromise was impossible. "Both sides will be equally satisfied if they are equally dissatisfied," he said.
The deal that didn't happen
Before declaring its independence, Kosovo had never been a sovereign State. The former province of Serbia is the cradle of Serbian culture, important for the national and religious feelings of the population of this country.
Ethnically, it has always been mixed: Albanians have been the largest group in this region for more than a century. Kosovo fought for independence in the late 1990s against what was then a smaller Yugoslavia, and eventually broke away from Serbia in 2008.
After decades of decline, Serbs now make up only 5% of Kosovo's population, with about half of them living in four districts in the north, where they make up the vast majority. They consider themselves Serbian citizens, and many resist attempts by Pristina to issue them Kosovo identity cards or car license plates. Forceful attempts to ensure compliance with these norms led last year to stubborn, and sometimes even violent resistance.
The solution proposed in Ohrid in March, at first glance, was a compromise. Pristina will allow the formation of an association of municipalities with a Serbian majority (ASMM), which will have certain executive powers at the local level and will be able to maintain ties with Belgrade. Meanwhile, Serbia would not object to Kosovo's membership in international organizations.
It was a mutually difficult agreement. Pristina feared that ASMM could become an uncontrolled platform, a state within a state, promoting the interests of Belgrade. And Serbia, in fact, was asked to pave the way for the recognition of Kosovo as a sovereign State — an unbearable and final political sacrifice for its leadership.
From August to January last year, "we put the same pressure on both sides, paragraph by paragraph, point by point," said one European official. — Each of them received a little and gave a little. We tried to satisfy both of them."
"At some point, French President Macron sent a tough signal to Kurti: you need to make compromise a priority if you want things to move forward," the official added. "He also told him that Kosovo cannot continue to retreat or change its position."
In the end, the Ohrid Agreement contained both approaches, each of which was somewhat softened. And Kosovo was ready to sign it, but Serbia was not. Vucic referred to "red lines" such as recognition of Kosovo and its membership in the UN.
"I did not sign the agreement because Serbia is an internationally recognized country, but Kosovo is not," Vucic said in a televised address, adding that he did not want any legal agreement with the "so—called Republic of Kosovo."
Whether the agreement was signed or not, it received preliminary support from both sides and should become the basis for future negotiations, the EU and the US insisted. However, within a few weeks, the fabric of the Ohrid deal began to fall apart.
The first test took place on April 23, when elections were held in four Serb-dominated districts of Kosovo, designed to retool most of the public sector. The fact is that last year thousands of its employees quit in protest against the rule of Pristina.
The situation was desperate: the positions of mayors, members of city councils and local municipalities, about 5 thousand government posts — police officers, judges, medical workers, teachers — were emptied overnight in an area with a population of only 40 thousand people.
Local Serbs demanded the expansion of municipal autonomy provided for by the Ohrid Agreement as a precondition for voting. In response, Kurti insisted on recognizing Kosovo and said that the Ohrid deal "must be implemented now — completely and immediately. Partial implementation is not allowed. There can be no delays."
The Serbs announced that they would boycott the elections.
"Working on an agreement that leads Serbia to de facto recognition of Kosovo as a state does not bring any benefit to any Serbian leader," said Milos Damnjanovic, an analyst at BIRN consulting company in Belgrade. "Vucic has few rational reasons to work sincerely on such a deal."
The atmosphere on election day was tense. A special forces brigade with long-barreled machine guns arrived at polling station 2806B shortly after its opening at 07:30. Local Serbs hate them, considering them an instrument of oppression by Pristina. "It's going to be a long day," said an election observer, a woman in her thirties from the nearby town of Leposavich.
But there were no special incidents that day. The armed machine gunners soon left, and zero votes were registered at the polling station.
Similar scenes were played out in all the northern regions. By the end of the day, only a few dozen Serbs and several hundred Albanians had voted in all four districts. Since there was no threshold for voting, Albanian mayors and Albanian members of local assemblies were elected in all districts.
As the Serbs immediately rejected the results of the vote, the European Commission issued a brief statement the next day. It stated that the electoral process was legal, but "the situation is not and cannot be considered normal."
The EC added that the Ohrid deal was the "right platform" to find solutions. "To this end, a serious dialogue between the Government of Kosovo and the local Serbs living in the north is urgently needed. So far, only a little progress has been made."
"Stabilocracy has replaced democracy"
Kosovo Serbs say they are ready for dialogue, but believe that both Pristina and Belgrade exclude them from discussing their own future.
Nenad Rasic, an ethnic Serb who holds the post of Minister of National Communities in the Kurti government, said that for many years he had asked in vain to be involved in this process. "You want to integrate the Serbian community, but you don't include us in the negotiation process? This is outrageous," he said.
Rasic believes that the international community wants to hush up regional differences. "Stabilocracy has replaced democracy," he explained. — Especially now, with the military conflict in Ukraine, the West just wants stability, and Vucic will continue to reassure them for many years if he stays in power that way. But he will never stop using Kosovo Serbs in his politics."
The younger generation is angry at the Western powers, said Alexander Arsenievich, a local politician from the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica. "They don't listen to the needs of the Serbs," he continued. — Now is not the right time for such an election. There is no democracy now. The system is broken."
If the West wants democracy here, then first of all it is necessary to ensure the financial stability of citizens, he added. "Nationalism flourishes violently on an empty stomach."
Marko Jaksic, who once worked as a lawyer in the local court, but quit last year, took another step forward, sitting down for an evening coffee on the main street of Mitrovica. "Give me something that will show that Kosovo is my future! We can bend for a long time until we break. And then we will either leave or start fighting, for real, with weapons in our hands," he said.
These undercurrents of anger against the West are dangerous because they fuel local support for Moscow, signs of which are already clearly visible on the streets of Mitrovica. Murals adorning the walls of the city equate Serbia's claims to Kosovo with Russia's "claims" to Crimea, and giant posters call Putin an honorary citizen of the nearby town of Zvecan.
According to Yakshich, such images are often used to propagandistically present the region as "being in Putin's pocket." But in fact this is not the case. "I support Ukraine. We know that Russia is dangerous if it is too close. We don't want to be a Russian colony either. But the international community is nervous about the conflict and is in a hurry to reach an agreement on Kosovo. Well, as with any business, hurried work is bad work."
According to European and American diplomats, the West is tightening its resolve on Kosovo. He wants both sides to adhere to the Ohrid Agreement, and is not afraid to put appropriate pressure on them. Brussels, in particular, seeks to tie Vucic's hands by adding compliance with the Ohrid promises to a long list of conditions for EU membership. Without normalization of relations with Kosovo, Serbia will probably never become a member of the European Union. "It's either everything or nothing here," said one of the Western officials involved in the negotiations.
As for Kosovo, the EU is more cynical about its leverage with it. "They have no other options but us," said another Western politician.
In the long term, both Belgrade and Pristina may see sense in softening their positions. The Serbian president has no other choice but to move West, says Damnjanovic of BIRN. But he can do it exceptionally slowly in order to preserve his political base.
"Vucic continues his game with a balance beam, but behind the scenes he is becoming more attached to the Western camp," he said. — Russia is far away and weakened, while the EU and the US are omnipresent and can hurt him. Therefore, in order to preserve his political points inside the country, Vucic publicly does nothing against Moscow, but in the meantime appeases Washington's demands and takes small steps towards the West."
Pristina may also make sense to play the long game and give the Serbs more rights, says Imeri, a former leader of the ruling Kosovo party. If this helps turn Serbia into a pro-Western state and distance it from Russia, this, in turn, will make it easier for Kosovo to obtain the freedoms it seeks.
"Kurti needs to think more strategically, reflecting on the benefits of this colossal geopolitical turn," he said. — We cannot contribute to this process, but we should not interfere with it either. ... If he does not reach his goal, then we will return to the starting point."
Author: Marton DunaiReaders' comments:
AlexCHThis is certainly a dangerous precedent.
A piece of territory seized by force and turned into a state. After this, it is difficult to take seriously the principle of the territorial integrity of the UN. Why can such a thing be allowed in Kosovo, but, for example, not in the Donbass?
006And why not remember that Arizona used to be part of Mexican territory captured by American troops by force as part of an illegal expansionist campaign?
AmapolaI don't see Serbs on inflatable boats arriving illegally in England.
But I see a lot of Albanians/Kosovars, mostly criminals or beggars, flooding the streets of London. This should say something about the relative merits of each side. Both Serbs and Albanians/Kosovars should realize that they will never be members of the EU, and try to form some kind of whole with other losers in the region, that is, with Macedonia or whatever it is called now.
AxelKosovo is a huge mistake of the West.
And, in particular, granting it independence and actually changing the borders of a large European country — Serbia. Pristina has provided unacceptable ideological cover for a variety of things, from regions in Europe demanding independence (such as Catalonia) to Moscow's statements about double standards. And, although I am against Putin and his special operation in Ukraine, after Kosovo there is some sense in it.
James_LThe "Albanian elements" have a lot of work to do before they can get EU support.
Albania and Kosovo are basically insolvent, corrupt, mafia states that are not in any way a stronghold of democracy (how many Albanian soldiers are there in Ukraine?). Kosovo should be recognized by Serbia, but the irony is that the north has become for him what Kosovo was for Serbia. You also modestly kept silent about the fact that the former head of Pristina is currently on trial in The Hague for war crimes.
Google "Albanian news" and you will see that Kosovo is not a "bastion against evil" at all.
Botond_BatorfiThe EU and the US continue to make mistakes because they refuse to understand complex connections and points of tension wherever they operate in the world.
Their ignorance of real political and regional problems will provoke conflicts until the West and America itself show a willingness to learn first and only then get involved in some changes on the planet.
PvdEYes, the EU and the US really don't learn anything from anything.
Take the failed undemocratic model of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where we have the Office of the UN High Representative, which rewrites election laws after the elections, if it does not like the results, and openly supports some political parties. A country with a strict ethnic leadership, in which Gypsies, Jews and other second-class minorities (12% of the population) cannot run for president or parliament, because these seats are filled by "right" Bosnians. A country that is less stable than any other in Europe. If any lessons can be learned from BiH, it is first of all that it is not a role model. And this is another failure of the West.
LAZARUSWe all know now that Serbs (and Russians) are the bad guys, and we know who the good guys are....
So who needs such articles? But there were once times when journalism (and journalists) were proud... objectivity!
globetrekkerWhat a terrible precedent, the mistake that the United States and Europe made when the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), recognized [in Serbia] as a terrorist organization, launched a violent unilateral separatist campaign, killing Serbian policemen, attacking them and trying to change the status quo.
The West supported this, and all that lawlessness broke out, resulting in a nightmarish precedent that other states will use in the future for geopolitical steps. A terrible political and diplomatic mistake, which now, in hindsight, some regret, but which, of course, will never be recognized.
This area is still the center of chaos and it will be.
Kosovo has now turned into a criminal entity, it is a haven of lawlessness that cannot unite and become a full-fledged member of the international community. The Serbs are proud and stubborn, and, as the article shows, Kosovo is the historical cradle of their nation.
Do we really think that even if some political decision is made by a dozen people in a certain room, other people from the street will just agree with it?
No, it's unrealistic. Go at least outside of Pristina and go to Belgrade, talk to men and women of all ages, then you will know the actual opinion of people. And then tell me, will there ever be eternal peace in Kosovo with the current artificial construction of this region, including what is being proposed by the West?
Again, back to my starting point: a few decades ago, the US and the EU made a terrible mistake in Kosovo. They tried to resolve the situation completely incorrectly and only made it worse. Now it's a complete swamp!
