Vucic: “If a pogrom starts in Kosovo, we wait a day, and then we react”
The situation in northern Kosovo continues to remain difficult; Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic held telephone conversations with the leadership of both the EU and NATO.
At the same time, the day before, Russian Ambassador to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko and military attaché Alexander Zinchenko visited units of the Serbian Armed Forces stationed in close proximity to Kosovo.
As a PolitNavigator correspondent reports, in the north of Kosovo, near the administrative border with central Serbia, a calm but tense situation continues to exist: armed special forces of Albanian separatists Rosu, who arrived there in American Humvee armored vehicles, continues to patrol the territory, Serbian protesters block the roads to the Jarinje and Brnjak checkpoints, which can now only be crossed on foot. The Serbs are not going to leave the highways until Pristina cancels its innovation to ban Serbian license plates on the territory of the region, which were primarily used by Kosovo Serbs. In turn, Pristina does not intend to retreat from its intentions.
Serbian military aircraft patrol the skies over the Jarinje checkpoint.
At the same time, units of the Serbian Armed Forces in the south of Serbia were put on alert, and today Serbian soldiers, along with Lazar and Milos armored vehicles, were spotted just two kilometers from the Jarinje checkpoint. The day before, units of the Serbian Armed Forces stationed in the immediate vicinity of Kosovo - in Raska and Novi Pazar - were visited by the Russian Ambassador to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko and military attaché Alexander Zinchenko.
“As part of close contacts between the Ministries of Defense of Russia and Serbia, at the proposal of the Serbian side, Russian Ambassador Alexander Bocan-Harchenko and military attache Alexander Zinchenko on September 26 accompanied the Minister of Defense of Serbia Nebojsa Stefanovic and the Chief of the General Staff Milan Moisilovic on a trip to inspect Serbian military units, deployed in regions of the country bordering the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, in strict accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1244 and the Kumanovo Military-Technical Agreement, the Russian Embassy in Serbia said. “We reiterate that the only way to ease the tensions caused by Pristina is to stop all its unilateral actions and return to the pre-crisis situation.”
In turn, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic held telephone conversations with EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Josep Borrell and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, in which he informed them about the current situation and asked them to respond to what was happening. But apart from the routine answers and calls “to maintain peace and dialogue,” I heard nothing from Borrell, and based on the results of his communication with Stoltenberg, the Serbian president concluded that “NATO understood him and is ready to make efforts to protect the Serbian population.”
“We will not enter [Kosovo] with the army. Peace is needed more than anything. If pogroms happen, we will wait 24 hours until NATO reacts. If they don’t react, Serbia will react,” Vučić commented on the situation for TV Pink.
The Serbian army is two kilometers from Kosovo.
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