Has The Battle For Kosovo Been Postponed?

By Darko Lazar

2022 will go down in history as the year that ushered in the Ukraine war and permanently changed the world. This seismic event accelerated and intensified the global geopolitical re-composition. It brought back the Cold War doctrine and redefined relations, not just between the collective West and Russia, but between the West and countries such as China and Saudi Arabia.

In addition to creating an energy crisis and pushing inflation to a 40-year high, the West’s commitment to prolonging and exacerbating the conflict has unsettled security across the European continent – and nowhere is this more evident than along the Serbia-Kosovo frontier.

The Western-backed authorities in Pristina led by Albin Kurti are trying to use the new conditions created by the conflict in Ukraine as an avenue for achieving their long-term objectives, which include the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the territory of Kosovo. Meanwhile, the US-led NATO is using the rising tensions as an instrument to pressure Serbia into joining its ranks in the war against Russia.

Serbia has thus far managed to preserve its neutrality, but the coming year promises a great deal of uncertainty, and just like many other parts of the world, Serbia will face its share of existential challenges in 2023.

From Donbass to Kosovo

The latest flare-up in Kosovo began in early December when Pristina sent its special forces to the Serb-majority north in violation of an EU-facilitated agreement that specifically prohibits such deployments.

In the days that followed, the Kosovan police started arresting ethnic Serbs and local communities responded by erecting barricades and roadblocks.

Belgrade, which has refused to recognize Kosovo’s independence after the province was ripped away from Serbia following NATO’s aggression on the country in 1999, accused Pristina of “brutal terror.”

The Serbian government even went as far as to submit a formal request to the NATO-led forces in Kosovo for the return of up to 1,000 Serbian police and military personnel to the province in line with UN Security Council Resolution 1244.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, that request was snubbed, which eventually led to the Serbian army declaring the “highest level of combat readiness” as tensions reached a tipping point.

This time around, an all-out war was averted via a negotiated settlement, but in the absence of a broader deal, it would be foolish to assume that the long-running disputes in the Balkans have been resolved.

Pristina will not stop trying to establish a police presence in the Serb-majority municipalities of Kosovo or give up on its dream of an ethnically ‘clean’ state. As such, any de-escalation of tensions is only temporary, and the next standoff is expected in April when elections are due to be held for leadership positions in the Serbian municipalities.

According to Russia’s envoy to Belgrade, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, “Pristina openly [...] bets on hard power, and brute force,” which make it very difficult to reach a peaceful settlement.

Speaking to Rossiya 24 in mid-December as the most recent crisis unfolded, Botsan-Kharchenko made a direct connection between the situation in Kosovo and the one in Donbass.

“The whole situation, everything, including Pristina’s attitude towards the Kosovo Serbs, resembles, although on a smaller scale, what has happened and is still happening in Ukraine,” the Russian diplomat said.

Here it’s important to note that Russia’s fight in Ukraine is against NATO and not the Ukrainians themselves. In much the same way, it’s NATO that is keeping the proverbial boot on the neck of the Serbs in Kosovo, rather than the ethnic Albanians. This may be a somewhat oversimplified version of events, but at its core, it is fundamentally accurate.

It also enables one to put forward a truly genuine formula for permanent peace and stability in both the Ukraine and the Balkans: the revision of the existing borders, as well as the removal of NATO’s military infrastructure and its proxies.

It goes without saying that the Western military machine won’t leave on their own accord. How, when, and under what circumstances something like that unfolds in the Balkans depends largely on how successful the Russians are at fulfilling their key objectives in Ukraine.