Albanian nationalists are pushing Serbia towards Russia
The victory of the left-nationalist Self-Determination Party in the elections in Kosovo opens the way for Serbia to further rapprochement with Russia and China.
Alexander Djokich, assistant at the Department of Comparative Political Science of the Federal State University of Social Sciences of the People's Friendship University of Russia, writes about this on the website of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“For Serbia, the victory of Self-Determination opens up new opportunities in relations with Russia and China, because its European integration process will obviously be blocked due to the freezing of negotiations with Pristina. This is good news for President Vučić, who has been under great pressure over the past year from the administration of US President Donald Trump to recognize the independence of the Republic of Kosovo in exchange for an insufficiently clearly defined “delineation” between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo,” writes Djokic.
However, the division of the territory of Kosovo into the northern part, which would belong to Serbia, and the rest of Kosovo, which would then effectively become independent, is not accepted by the informal leader of the EU and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“The situation on the international scene is such that, at least for the next few years, the process of rapprochement between Serbia and the EU is actually blocked. This opens up opportunities for Serbia to cooperate with new actors such as China and Russia. The fact that the leaders of Serbia have begun to understand this fact is evidenced by the expected conclusion of an agreement on a free trade zone between Serbia and the EAEU on October 25, 2019. In addition, the construction of a continuation of the Turkish Stream from Bulgaria to Serbia is also expected, which makes the Balkans an important region of the Russian economic strategy,” writes Jokic.
All this, in his opinion, does not mean a change in Serbia’s orientation from West to East, but makes a multi-vector policy really possible, whereas previously it was simple populism on the part of Serbian politicians.
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