Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova's answer to a media question about developments in Kosovo
9 June 2023 18:08
1148-09-06-2023
Question: It seems that, fortunately, tensions in Kosovo have somewhat eased in recent days. Is this so? What can you say about the developments in that region? What could facilitate a resumption of the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina?
Maria Zakharova: Indeed, we have seen some stabilisation in the north of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija. The outbreak of violence unleashed by Pristina under a NATO shield has abated, but the root causes of the escalation have not been eliminated, and the West has not drawn the right conclusions.
Mediators from Washington and Brussels perked up, trying to avoid a new round of tension in the region. As before, they are set on achieving this exclusively at Serbia's expense. Pretending to condemn the Kosovo "authorities" for inciting the conflict and imposing some makeshift "sanctions" on them, they are trying to force another obviously flawed finale on Belgrade. In return, they are offering Serbia economic assistance, an influx of investment, and wider military cooperation. There is no doubt that behind these promises, there are plans to pull Serbia away from Russia and other traditional partners, to force it to disrupt its strategic partnership with our country.
The West wants Belgrade to persuade the Kosovo Serbs to take part in the re-election of the heads of the northern communities and return to the regional institutions without any preconditions, that is, taking the US and EU's word for it when they say Serbia's interests will finally be taken into account. Of course, those vague promises of Western support do not guarantee the withdrawal of Pristina's special forces from non-Albanian areas, much less the creation of the Community of Serb Municipalities of Kosovo (CCMC). Meanwhile, these are the key prerequisites for a resumption of dialogue, which is impossible in a situation where Serbs suffer severe persecution in Kosovo and have to fight for physical survival.
The Americans' studied frown at the Kosovo "leadership" is clearly not enough. Decisive steps are needed to steer the negotiation process in a business-like vein, where the parties would work to achieve solutions within the international legal framework. Instead, the "prime minister," Albin Kurti, is being allowed to go further and further beyond the limits of balanced behaviour. He stages public sessions of self-hypnosis, chanting a ridiculous slogan about Kosovo being the most democratic state in the Western Balkans and using the term "fascist militia," which stigmatises local Serbs, likening them to Italian Blackshirts squads that served Benito Mussolini. We see this as a clumsy attempt to put a label on the Serbs that primarily refers to the Albanians themselves, when they formed the Albanian Fascist Militia based in Tirana during the Italian occupation of 1939-1943.
We call on the West to stop its destructive policy in the Kosovo settlement and stop playing up to the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government in Pristina in their ambition to turn the province into an ethnically pure territory. There is no alternative to UN Security Council Resolution 1244. Any substitution of this cornerstone document is fraught with a deepening of the crisis with unpredictable consequences for security in the Balkans.
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