Balkanizing Balkans
Serbia—with the open and covert encouragement by Russia—stands on the brink of invading Kosovo. This is one of those geographic areas that few people other than the locals follow, but which has the potential to bring the European Union member states against each other as well as putting extra internal pressures on NATO politically as well as militarily.
The small statelet of the Republic of Kosovo, which is majority ethnic Albanian, declared independence in 2008 from its northern neighbor Serbia around a decade after the end of the last Balkan war. The Serbian government, backed by its big Slavic brother in Moscow, has not only refused to recognize Kosovo as independent, it has also backed Moscow in rejecting NATO and supporting Russia’s “denazification” pretext for invading Ukraine.
The most recent flare-up has been around the issue of motor vehicle license plates, of all things. In the majority-Serb areas of Kosovo, Serbs want to keep their previous Serbian issued license plates because they reject the government of Kosovo and its capital city of Pristina. Meanwhile, Russian propaganda channels reach deep into Serbia and are influential among ethnic Serb populations of Kosovo. And these outlets, like RT, are encouraging political hatred and ethnic strife, just to put things in simpler terms.
This being the Balkans, however, the sources of conflict and strife are convoluted, long-standing, and resistant to easy solutions—or summation for that matter. The important thing to know is that since this weekend, ethnic Serb nationalist militias in one Serb-majority province of Kosovo have begun erecting roadblocks, launching attacks against NATO/EU peacekeeping forces (K-FOR), and denied the entry of Kosovo’s own police and security forces into parts of the country. Meanwhile, backed by Russia, the actual government of Serbia appears to support the idea of “denazifying” Kosovo in the way that the Russian government said its invasion of Ukraine was to “denazify” that country.
Furthermore, Kosovo’s independence claims are rejected by Russia on the UN Security Council, as well as by Serbia (should go without saying), Greece, and Spain within the EU and NATO. (The Greeks have their own historical irritations with former parts of Yugoslavia taking on historic Greek names; Spain fears supporting any separatist movements because it might encourage the Catalans to split off from Madrid and declare itself independent, too.)
Let there be no doubt that the Russian government is looking for any angle to widen the conflict and weaken international resolve against its actions in Ukraine by having the member states of Europe and NATO at each others’ throats. While it is possible the Europeans will prevail in keeping a lid on the conflict, the Russians and their favorite Slavic brother people—the Serbs—are doing all they can to launch a proxy war on the European southern flank. Any resemblance to the work of the Russian tsarist efforts to use Serb ethnic conflict to launch what became the Great War is more than just coincidental, I fear.
Wikipedia even has a page dedicated to Russia-Serbia relations with a sub-segment dedicated to Kosovo.
There was an exchange on TD where some newish? Commenter was castigating Marque for this comment Sub (was such a jerk about it- esp. as it is none of their business). Marque said that if TD people ever asked him to close it, he would.
German compound word for the day, found on the Ukraine war coverage page of a Zurich newspaper:
Versorgungsengpässe = supply bottlenecks
https://www.nzz.ch/international/krieg-gegen-die-ukraine
(also posting on today's TMD)