The situation on the border between Serbia and Kosovo is explosive. Serbia has arrived with a military convoy and Serbian extremists are trying to storm the Kosovo border near Jarinje. The NATO-led peacekeeping force, which also involves Switzerland, blocked the passage with barbed wire.
Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti (47) and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic (52) also verbally attack each other. Kurti calls Vucic a “leader of criminal gangs” and “Putin’s man in the Balkans”.
The KFOR peacekeeping force is standing by. Colonel Egon Frank, who leads the German Bundeswehr soldiers, told the “Welt” that there was a “permanent danger that the security situation could deteriorate in a very short time”. And a new statement from Kurti or Vucic could be enough to tip the scales.
Menacingly more violent this time
Despite the tension, Balkan experts consider open war quite unlikely. “Because then Serbia would have to mess with the NATO-led peacekeeping force KFOR,” Konrad Clewing (55) of the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Research told Blick.
And Daniel Bochsler, 43, a political scientist at Central European University and the University of Belgrade, says: “It is alarming to conjure up a war in the classical sense.” In recent years, there have been repeated escalations based on a similar pattern, Bochsler adds. However, the tonality and threat are sharper than usual this time.
Bochsler: “Belgrade is much less constructive. And nowadays it is not only the deployment of nationalist gangs at the border that is irritating, but also the presumably unjustified detention of the politician Rada Trajkovic by the Serbian security forces. »
On the other hand, Kosovan Prime Minister Albin Kurti is pushing for a constitutional solution to the conflict and the enforcement of the Kosovo justice system in northern Kosovo. Bochsler: “In doing so, Kurti narrows the space for the hitherto valid compromise formula, according to which both sides have accepted a partially unclear situation.”
leverage against the international community
According to Bochsler, the political calculations of both countries are behind the tensions. He explains: “The international community, and in particular the US, is pressing for a swift negotiated solution. And the more tense the situation, the more concessions the two governments can expect.”
The two governments not only hoped for concessions regarding the status of Kosovo and the Serb-inhabited northern part of Kosovo. Bochsler: “The Serbian government also hopes that the West will look a little more generously the other way when it comes to domestic political issues such as corruption, mafia connections, media repression, democracy and relations with Russia.”