Serbia in this situation cannot fight in Kosovo and Metohija, but there are other ways to protect their legal rights in the southern region
It is not easy to predict what the Serbian authorities will do on September 1 if the Albanian separatists in Kosovo ban the use of Serbian identity documents and Serbian car numbers, since in such situations no one warns the other side in advance about possible retaliatory steps. This was stated to IA REGNUM by Chaslav Koprivitsa, Professor of the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Belgrade.
Recall that the government of the separatist Kosovo, headed by Prime Minister Albin Kurti, intends to use the so-called “reciprocity regime” in relation to Serbia from September 1. This regime implies that documents and license plates issued by the authorities of the Republic of Serbia will not be valid on the territory of the separatist entity, since Belgrade does not recognize “independent Kosovo” and documents issued by the Pristina authorities. Albanian separatists have already tried to introduce this regime since August 1, but this caused a new aggravation of the situation in the north of Kosovo and Metohija. After the intervention of the US Embassy, the Kurti government decided to postpone the implementation of the new rules to September 1.
According to Koprivica, the difficult situation in which Serbia finds itself, partly through its own fault, but primarily because of the unprincipled position of the West, “is further complicated by Russia’s special operation on the territory of the former Ukraine.”
“The West is using the situation to increase pressure on Serbia. Let me remind you that Serbia has no access to the sea, it is surrounded by states that are either already members of NATO or are under a kind of occupation by the alliance, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina. Therefore, Serbia has a problem with the import of weapons from Russia. The West makes it clear to us that if it wants, it can create problems for us much more than those that we have previously encountered”, said the Serbian expert.
On the other hand, it is clear that “a group of bandits who call themselves the Kosovo authorities, run by people who, apparently, do not have excess political intelligence” enjoy the support of the West, Koprivica continued. This is evident from the fact that five influential Western countries – the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy – do not see anything controversial in the steps of the illegal authorities in Pristina, the expert noted.
“They do not proceed from the international legal reality, which consists in the fact that Kosovo and Metohija are an integral part of the Serbian state, but from a false, forcibly imposed reality, which was created by the unilateral recognition of a part of the territory of the Republic of Serbia taken away by force,” Koprivitsa said.
According to the expert, the West is trying to involve Serbia and its southern region in a big geopolitical game being played against Russia.
“The goal of this game is to create problems for Russia wherever possible, relying on the fact that it will not be able to answer. In this case, Serbia is just “collateral damage” for rapists from the West because of its attitude towards Russia, which distinguishes Serbia from almost all other European countries,” Koprivica believes.
Answering the question whether this means that Belgrade under the circumstances can only put up with the “reciprocity regime” that Pristina plans to introduce, the expert recalled that President Vucic had previously made rather loud statements on this subject that Serbia would win.
“If Serbia were allowed to independently resolve the issue with the illegal authorities of the separatist Kosovo, there would undoubtedly be no problems here. But the Albanian separatists are under the protection of NATO. Any entry of Serbian security forces into the territory of the southern province could be interpreted as a violation of international agreements. Even if there were no such international legal acts as the Kumanov agreement, which was confirmed by the UN Security Council, the United States has already shown that they are ready to use military force even outside the framework of international law, if they deem it necessary. Therefore, I am not sure that Serbia has the opportunity to enter into a military conflict over Kosovo and Metohija”, the expert said.
Koprivica also recalled that Belgrade, in a sense, made the first concession itself when, in the fall of 2021, it agreed that Serbian motorists, when entering the territory of the southern region, covered the state symbols on their car numbers with special stickers.
“This precedent has put Serbia in a position in which, as an internationally recognized state, it puts itself on a par with the bandits in Pristina who play state,” the expert noted.
Nevertheless, Koprivica believes, Serbia can still take a number of steps in response to the actions of Pristina without using armed force, but the Serbian authorities have so far stubbornly avoided these steps:
“If we are talking about whether the Serbian Armed Forces should cross the fictitious administrative line between Kosovo and Metohija and Central Serbia, I think that this should definitely be done if Kosovo separatists start killing Serbs. But there are other means as well. Serbia can isolate Kosovo economically and transportally, and under no circumstances should it take out loans in order to build a road that should connect “Greater Albania” with the road network of Serbia and the rest of Europe. Belgrade has the potential to create big problems for the bandits in Pristina.”
According to the expert, there is another possibility – to withdraw from the Brussels process. But this option would be a political defeat for President Aleksandar Vucic, since he agreed from the very beginning to the Brussels talks, which are formally outside the UN, but in fact, outside the legal framework of UNSCR 1244, Koprivica stressed.
“We just need to break off any negotiations with Pristina under the auspices of the EU. In the end, there is something that I have been talking about for years, and, unfortunately, time shows that my words are true. Serbia can declare Kosovo and Metohija as occupied territory and thus cancel all agreements that both the previous authorities, led by President Boris Tadic, and the current ones, led by President Aleksandar Vucic, signed in the name of a truce and the future. In fact, all these agreements were small steps towards the sovereignization of the separatist Kosovo,” summed up Časlav Koprivica.
Tatiana Stoyanovich, REX news agency