The crisis around Kosovo: Why Shoigu is helping Serbia

A new round of aggravation around Kosovo coincided with the start of joint exercises between the Serbian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Forces. Our military now plays an important stabilizing role in a region surrounded on all sides by NATO countries. However, although Belgrade and Moscow claim to have reached the highest level of military cooperation, direct intervention of the Russian army in the conflict around the Serbian enclave captured by the separatists is unlikely.

Footage from Russian-Serbian exercises

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Over the past few years, Russia has transferred to Serbia about 30 T-72MS tanks, the same number of BRDM-2MS, as well as helicopters, planes and Pantsir-S1 complexes. By the end of this year, Serbia will also receive Kornet ATGM launchers. Recently, at an exhibition in Belgrade, Serbian military equipment was shown with Russian weapons modules installed on it for the first time.

Political scientist Oleg Bondarenko recalls that in the early 2000s, when Russia was just beginning to recover from the Yeltsin era, Moscow had to withdraw its peacekeepers from the region. Now this greatly limits the space for maneuver - both for us and for the Serbs, surrounded on all sides by NATO countries. Suffice it to recall the recent case when Romania began to block the delivery of armored personnel carriers from the Russian Federation along the Danube, donated to the Serbian army.

“We withdrew our base in 2003, so now we can only react diplomatically. Unfortunately, Moscow cannot do anything more in this situation. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic now has a very unenviable situation - they are trying to drag him into a completely unnecessary military conflict, forcing him to send troops to the north of Kosovo, thereby threatening a military conflict between Serbia and NATO. He does not need this at all, he does not need a new war, he is a peacemaker and does not want to return Serbia to sanctions. Under him, Serbia became the most actively developing country in Europe with the highest growth rates. So naturally he is not interested in war. Of course, he will take all necessary actions to protect the Serbs in the north of Kosovo, but he does not need war at all, this is obvious,” Bondarenko notes.

However, even in such a situation, Russian assistance plays an important stabilizing role, cooling some hotheads. This is what the head of the All-Serbian Movement of Fatherland Patriots, Dragan Stanojevic, thinks.

According to him, the Serbs dream that one day the United States will withdraw from Kosovo, as happened in Afghanistan.

“Serbia is surrounded by NATO countries, each of which wants to take something away from us, so we have no other option but to build relations with Russia. Even when there is a joint demonstration of the capabilities of our countries, these “hot heads” cool down a little. Therefore, whether through diplomatic or semi-military means, we can only count on Russia,” Stanoevich told PolitNavigator.

The head of the “Officers of Russia” organization, Sergei Lipovoy, agrees with him.

“Russia acts as a stabilizing factor here. If you look carefully, then, despite all the minor skirmishes and tense situations, no one wants to seriously conflict with countries that are friends with Russia. At the same time, we do not interfere in the internal conflicts of other countries, as the West likes to do,” the expert argues.

The military is helping the Serbs not to the detriment of Russia, explains economist Alexander Dudchak.

“We do not work at a loss - in the military-technical sphere we give a lot, but Serbia buys a lot from Russia. Serbia is our partner, its people still have great love for the Russians, Serbia has repeatedly stated that it will never take part in anti-Russian sanctions, that it is not going to join NATO.

The situation in this country is not easy, it is in an aggressive environment - this must be taken into account and not demand more from it than it can do.

On the other hand, it needs to have clear prospects - if it moves towards cooperation with Russia, then it will have certain guarantees.

For example, in the gas sector, money is not everything, and Serbia receives quite comfortable and preferential conditions compared to other countries.

This should also be understood by others - a policy in which the state is not guided by a position imposed from outside, the so-called political expediency of the collective West, - it receives adequate support,” Dudchak said.