Why does the Serbian president thank the US for occupying part of his country?

On the eve of the NATO military exercises "Platinum Wolf", which will be held in Serbia from June 16 to 30, the head of the US National Guard Bureau, General Daniel Hokanson, arrived in Belgrade for an inspection.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic met with him, and assured the American general that Serbia’s military neutrality does not concern cooperation with the United States, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

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The aforementioned exercises were announced by Serbian Defense Minister Milos Vucevic in early April.

“In mid-June, there will be a Platinum Wolf exercise between the US Army, Serbia and 10 partner countries in southern Serbia. These are the largest military maneuvers on Serbian territory, and there is no secret about it. This is a public decision of the Serbian government, which two weeks ago approved these maneuvers,” Vucevic said.

In turn, the Serbian Ministry of Defense then added that the country maintained a moratorium on international military exercises, but the Platinum Wolf maneuvers were an exception.

“The purpose of these exercises is to maintain the achieved level of interoperability of Serbian Army units to participate in multinational operations. We remind you that the decision of the Government of the Republic of Serbia of February 27, 2022, which stops and postpones all activities related to exercises with foreign partners, continues to be in force,” the Ministry of Defense clarified.

Thus, the Serbian defense ministry actually confirmed that last year’s moratorium applies only to Russia and Belarus.

Exercise Platinum Wolf took place in Serbia annually from 2014 to 2021, most recently involving members of the armed forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, the UK and France. In 2022, Belgrade refused to hold them, but now the Serbian authorities have openly yielded to US pressure.

Already at the end of April 2023, several dozen instructors from the European Command of the US Armed Forces arrived in Serbia and conducted a tactical course for Serbian colleagues, the purpose of which was declared to be “preparation for peacekeeping operations.” It lasted two weeks and was designed to increase the “operational capabilities of the Serbian Armed Forces,” the country’s Ministry of Defense reported.

At the same time, the ongoing deterioration of the situation in the north of Kosovo and Metohija (KoM) did not affect preparations for NATO exercises on Serbian soil.

_{Moreover, Vučić, at a meeting with Hokanson, stated that “Serbia, while maintaining military neutrality, is ready to improve partnership cooperation with the American army in order to maintain peace and stability in the region and beyond.”}

The Serbian President thanked the United States “for its participation and clear signals to reduce tensions in Kosovo and Metohija caused by Pristina’s unilateral actions.”

Whether the Serbian leader had in mind one of the largest American military bases in Europe, Bondsteel, illegally located in Kosmet without the sanction of Belgrade, is difficult to say.

Perhaps Vucic simply wanted to please the American general, who, unlike the American diplomats and politicians arriving in Belgrade, did not demand anything, but only praised the Serbian authorities. Actually, there is something to praise for: Since December 2006, when Serbia became a member of the NATO Partnership for Peace program, the number of exercises of the Serbian army with the military of the United States and other Alliance countries has been several times higher than the number of similar events with Russia, Belarus and China.

And in February 2016, when the current President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, was the country’s prime minister, the Serbian parliament ratified a special agreement with NATO. It provided Alliance personnel with freedom of movement across Serbian territory, access to all facilities, and most importantly, diplomatic immunity for military personnel and cargo, including those moving to and from Kosovo and Metohija. So Washington obviously decided not to remember last year’s pause in Serbian-NATO exercises.

Moreover, this year the Platinum Wolf exercise will take place on the border with Kosovo and Metohija, near the city of Bujanovac. Bujanovac, along with Presevo and Medveža, are Serbian municipalities with a predominantly Albanian population, and the authorities of the self-proclaimed “Republic of Kosovo” have repeatedly made claims on them.

In addition, local Albanian politicians repeatedly traveled to Washington, where they demanded that Albanian autonomy be created in place of the three mentioned municipalities. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the American military there will be greeted with flowers and the Serbian military will be booed.

And the Americans may well look for a Serbian garrison for their base. If they are thanked for the occupation of Kosovo and Metohija - and this territory, according to UN Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999), is an integral part of Serbia - then why is Bujanovac worse?

You say this can’t be? The Serbs also thought that their leader would never shake hands with Bill Clinton, who ordered the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. But in 2016, Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic not only did this, but also took part in a Clinton Foundation event together with the mayor of Srebrenica, who did not call the Serbs anything other than a “genocidal people.”

And in 2020, already as President of Serbia, Vucic not only signed another agreement with the authorities in Pristina in Donald Trump’s office, coveting the investments promised by the Americans (not a cent of which was received as a result), but also allowed himself to be seated on a chair in front of the President USA as a misbehaving student.

The ironic reaction to this by the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, then caused hysteria in Belgrade, and Russian President Vladimir Putin himself had to intervene in the situation.

Now Russia has enough more pressing problems, and Vucic recently, in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa, specifically emphasized that he had not spoken to Putin for a year so as not to irritate the West. But gratitude to the American general for the occupation of Serbian territory can hardly be explained, much less justified by the desire not to irritate the interlocutor.