NATO soldiers and Serb protesters clash in Zvecan, Kosovo, May 29, 2023
At least 50 people were injured in recent clashes of NATO troops and Serb protestors in Kosovo and the crisis seems to be spinning out of control even further.
NATO forces attacked a group of demonstrators in the majority-Serb town of Zvecan in Kosovo after Serb demonstrators had staged a sit-down protest outside municipal buildings in Zvecan, Zubin Potok and Leposavic.
The protest was set to prevent ethnic Albanian officials from taking office following elections boycotted by the Serb population as illegitimate. The peaceful demonstration turned into clashes after KFOR provoked the escalation by firing the first stun grenade.
Following the clashes, 50 protesters were hospitalized with injuries in nearby Mitrovica, and two were admitted to the emergency room. The Serbian side reports that KFOR even used automatic riffles in sporadic fire against demonstrators.
In an attempt to play the victim, KFOR insists that 25 soldiers were injured in the melee.
Tensions have been on the rise in northern Kosovo since April, when the region’s Serb majority boycotted elections backed by the ethnic Albanian administration in Pristina. The turnout was less than 4%, but Kosovo authorities claimed the election results were legitimate and insisted that four ethnic Albanian mayors win their positions legally.
Expectedly, NATO and Western officials blamed the Serb protesters for instigating violence that led to the growth of tensions. In turn, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic accused Kosovo’s Albanian prime minister, Albin Kurti, of trying to “provoke a major conflict between the Serbs and NATO,” and warned that Serbia “will not allow a pogrom or the killing of its people.”
Meanwhile, Kosovan officials revealed that additional police and security services were sent to the contested regions “to assist mayors of the northern communes of Zvecan, Leposavic and Zubin Potok to exert their right of work at the official objects.”
It should be noted that on May 27, Vucic announced he put the Serbian army on a “higher state of alert” due to clashes between ethnic Serbs and Kosovar police.
“An urgent movement (of troops) to the Kosovo border has been ordered,” Serbia’s defence minister Milos Vucevic said in a national broadcast. “It is clear that the terror against the Serb community in Kosovo is happening.”
Serbian leadership was also demanding that NATO peacekeeping forces immediately protect the Serbian community from Kosovo police. There are no news in the fact that this did not happen.
The Serbs in northern Kosovo are locked in the conflict that is rapidly moving towards a further escalation. The Kosovo leadership does not send signals that it is really interested in a peace in this region and pushes confrontation measures with the full support of NATO, the EU and directly the United States.
One may suggest that the recent signs of escalation of tensions in on the Serbian-Kosovo contact line and in Karabakh could be a part of the wider plan to instigate the fire of war all across this part of the world. Such hot conflicts appearing in regions where positions of Russia are traditionally strong will for sure play into the hands of the globalists that make very possible effort to assist the anti-human Kyiv regime in its war against the Russians.
