Russia will have to protect its security in the Balkans
A new military conflict on a local scale is quite possible in the Balkans.
This opinion was expressed in an interview with Arguments and Facts by the director of the Progressive Policy Foundation, founder of the Balkanist.ru project Oleg Bondarenko, according to whom the Kosovo leadership staged a demonstrative and brazen attack, which became a test of strength and a test of Belgrade’s weakness.
“Theoretically, a new military conflict in the Balkans is possible. The question is how global it can be: after all, no one in Europe needs a conflict of this scale. Local conflict is more likely. It’s especially worth paying attention: when Pristina’s special forces moved to the north of Kosovo, their movements were monitored by peacekeepers who are located in Kosovo under the guise of KFOR,” Bondarenko said.
He said that the Hungarian part of KFOR even tried to block the movements of special forces, but received orders from the peacekeepers’ headquarters not to oppose this.
“It follows that, in fact, the West indulges such attempts by Pristina to take full control of the north of Kosovo, carry out a cleansing and force the last 100 thousand Serbs living there to leave their homeland and become refugees,” the expert is convinced.
He believes that Russia can convene an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, but calls it important in this situation that Belgrade coordinate its actions with Moscow.
“Today our country has very limited tools in the Balkans: there we only have an Emergency Situations Ministry base one hundred kilometers from the Kosovo border, which can change its purpose if necessary. But this, of course, is not enough for serious participation in the conflict.
When a Russian citizen who works as a diplomat in a UN mission demonstratively beaten and arrested for the whole day, this is an emergency situation that can unleash further escalation. In this case, Russia will have to protect its security in the Balkans,” Bondarenko sums up.
As PolitNavigator reported, Albanian armed units in Kosovo launched an attack on the Serbian enclaves of the region.
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