It's a shitshow on both sides.
On the one side, the Serbian president is exactly what the rest of the comments here describe him as, and worse. The situation would be infinitely better if he recognised Kosovo and moved on. Instead, he keeps the question open purely for his own political advantage, at the expense of the people.
On the other side, Kosovo is a military industrial complex puppet state that they've cut ties with/lost control of (intentionally or otherwise). It has been ramping up its opportunistic bullying and provocative abuse of the minority population in the north, who as of last year have no representation at all in local government, and are pretty helpless.
The unfortunate victims at this point in time are the minority Serbs in northern Kosovo, and more widely, the general Serbian population, who just like in the case of Brexit are being held hostage by their predominantly older, state-owned TV-watching, voting population who overwhelmingly vote for Vucic. Meanwhile, weapons have been flooding into the region from both the east and the west at alarming for the last couple of years, so he must be useful to someone.
Nobody wants this, but war is money, so here we are.
seems like two dogs barking https://old.reddit.com/r/serbia/comments/16vlpkv/napadi_na_s...
It's election season in Serbia, and the ruling president Vucic (basically a Serbian Erdogan) might actually lose.
This is really playing with fire by the Serbian government, and I don't think I can understand their strategy if it involves trying to force out kfor.
I'm also very concerned about Bosnia situation where similar nonsense is brewing up.
What I find even more laughable is that Serbia could have been the majority player in the region if they weren't just doing imperialism.
For Serbia to be anywhere a remotely important player would need to join the EU - looks at the former Yugoslavia states - Croatia and Slovenia (which Serbia had wars with), they are doing way better. However, if Serbs are to the EU, they would have to fall in-line, so ain't gonna happen (become a player)
They would have to fall in line until they join.
After that it will be one more country to pull the EU in its direction.
I am very much pro-European but the way the organization works is not viable. Particularly the requirement to have agreement from everyone on everything is not scalable.
> What I find even more laughable is that Serbia could have been the majority player in the region if they weren't just doing imperialism
All the Balkan states are much smaller, and would end up being economically subsumed by larger neighbors like Greece, Romania, Germany, Türkiye, and Russia. This is already the case across the Balkans today, and nothing would have changed if Serbia were less belligerent.
Oops, please not again…
Literally my first thought upon reading the headline… “oh not this shit again”…. I mean really I know tensions can simmer for decades but seriously I thought this was one place that after all the breakups and border redefining we had some kind of lasting if somewhat tenuous peace…
Ah young Willie McBride, I can't help wonder why
Do those that lie here know why did they die?
And did they believe when they answered the cause
Did they really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain
The killing and dying, were all done in vain
For young Willie McBride, it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again
>one place that after all the breakups and border redefining we had some kind of lasting if somewhat tenuous peace…
The Balkans?! Where each country borders its own borders/territories of old.
I don't think the conflict would escalate, though.
I mean yeah, I knew it wasn’t “settled” but it had the feel of the bar/pub fight just after the owner brings out the baseball bat and everyone quickly realised it’s a good idea to stop punching… everyone still has some grudges but they mostly got it out of their system and until someone actively starts some new shit… no one feels particularly compelled to start a fight themselves… its the “grumbling about grievances you don’t quite feel strongly enough to start a fight over” not the “I’ve got a knife on me and I’m trying to stir someone else up to start the fight so no one pins it on me”.
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You should show them how it's done by first blowing up yourself.
Edit: The meanness is well deserved in this case. This person is calling for destroying something personally important for many people and which they would give their lives to defend.
Blowing up all places of worship is one of the core tenets thats the root of the problem there. How about enabling future generations the space to respect each others principles and not have the 2/3/4 enemies fermenting troubles.
The balkans is one of the places I feel needs to just go for the lots of “city states” with alliances and treaties between them as they individually desire… I genuinely don’t know how they can really draw a map around any relatively “country sized” contiguous area (yes I know some countries are tiny Im suggesting they need a lot of such tiny countries, I’m talking about areas roughly the size of the current countries or a bit smaller or larger) … and hope to use the new borders to somehow settle things… the area is basically fractured like some bad sci-fi or cyberpunk city where there’s an overall “city” but every neighbourhood or two is vastly different… like this Chinatown is the recent immigrants Chinatown, then there’s little Italy, then you’ve got Japantown, oh now it’s the mixed Anglo suburb, oh now it’s the Chinatown for immigrants who’ve been here for over a hundred years and who have a very different culture to the recent immigrants, oh and now it’s little Russia and here’s little Vietnam….
There’s no stitching this together properly without making it worse… let the mess break up into tiny countries with borders they are happy with, kick anyone that wants to control too much surrounding territory (as in they think someone else’s city state shouldn’t exist) square in the head and just protect the lot with either a permanent NATO presence or use it as the excuse to give Frontex the EU’s common border and coast guard a sibling and actually make a damn Army of the European Union, have some fun with the name even, the European Union Defence Forces doesn’t sound too bad in French either, “Forces dē défense de l’Union Européenne” FDUE, EUDF, im just using Google translate so I’m sure some actual French speaking people could probably come up with another clever NATO style name where the acronym is the same in French…
Its worth mentioning that there is a second perspective to this being a matter of EU/NATO vs Serbia. Aljazeera had an interesting opinion piece framing it as Kosovo getting dropped to achieve Serbian integration into the western block
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/7/14/does-the-west-s...
Cant say anything about the plausibility but the references to EU sanctions against Kosovo and the former president of Kosovo being currently on trial in the Hague are interesting points.
Non opinion piece on the background https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/24/why-kosovos-standof...
Would be happy to hear from anyone familiar with that perspective, it was news to me. But pressuring Kosovo to play ball in the negotiations doesnt seem to be out of the question?
Just in case "the asset" makes it to the White House again, can't give up that opportunity again.
Stirring up shit for Russia. Next level.
Not even close. Vucic got a lot of people angry by eroding the country with corruption and is now trying to stir up shit before yet another "sudden" election to continue his reign. The man is a bitch and nothing will come of this.
I'm not challenging this, but wondering if it's true; then, why have more British troops been commited to the region already; and why are the White House warning of the events already?
It's not a good look to not call out parties for obvious bullshit like this.
Imagine that NATO did not increase manning, and the White House did not mention the troop build up. The headline now reads "Serbian troop massing on border, NATO says 'don't worry about it'". Bad look for NATO, and maybe makes future bullshit more likely.
I don't think there's any relation to the war in Ukraine. There just isn't really a mechanism for one to influence the other.
I don't understand why you are being downvoted. Modern Serbia is a Russian puppet state. Belgrade does nothing without the Kremlin's permission. Even its previous "good cop" posturing was all about becoming a member of the EU to push Russia's interests.
Modern imperialism... I remember in the late 90's at Uni I was hearing lectures refer to 'Information Warfare' and naively chuckling at how one could even have wars over information... and... The Kremlin's sphere of influence are masters of it. Money, weapons, murder, clickbait... in that order.
It will deescalate.
KFOR, the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo, has gotten a larger troop deployment in the last week [0].
Serbian soldiers crossing into Kosovo is a clear violation of the Kumanova Agreement AND unlike Russia-Ukraine they will be de facto declaring war against the US and NATO due to the American and EU boots on the ground, and bye bye 25 years of work to try and join the EU.
It's just election posturing by Serbia, as Vucic promised calling a snap election in the coming weeks in the aftermath of a mass shooting in May 2023 [1] destroying his popularity and sparking mass protests reminiscent of Euromaidan and Gezi Park.
[0] - https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-builds-up-forces-kosovo...
[1] - https://www.politico.eu/article/serbia-snap-election-2023-al...