The Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, in an interview for the Italian newspaper “La Repubblica”, spoke about the latest developments, especially the situation in the region after the Russian invasion and aggression in Ukraine.
“The tsarist tentacles in the Balkans
Kosovo is still in danger”
He failed the Blitzkrieg, he does not want to negotiate with Zelensky. He wants to remake Yalta, he feels like Stalin himself and sees his Roosevelt in Biden.
By: Paola Brera
When looking at his neighbor across the border, the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, 46, does not see Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, but “a puppet of the Kremlin”, ruling a country that “imitates Russia even though it is not”. He sees the attempt to destabilize the Balkans by “repeating the model”.
Serbia like Rusia?
“Former USSR has become an octopus with the Russian Federation at its center and its tentacles: Donbass, Crimea, Transnistria, South Ossetia… former Yugoslavia into smaller octopus with Serbia at its center, the Serb entity in Bosnia, a Serb entity in Montenegro that does not recognize its independence and illegal structures in the north of Kosovo.
Greater Serbia of Bosnian Serb Dodik as Putin’s Great mother Russia? The myth that needs to be recreated regardless its cost?
“We immediately condemned the Russian occupation. We were shocked, but not surprised. We saw it coming with the concentration of military forces.
Even though Putin failed the Blitzkrieg, he does not want to negotiate with Zelensky, he wants to do it with Biden. He wants a new Yalta. He feels like Stalin himself and sees his Roosevelt in Biden, but he does not want Churchill around. He wants to rewrite history and thinks he is at his level. The war in Ukraine, where he is not achieving great results, will not be enough: he will have to expand it if he wants to deal with Biden. This is why we are concerned: the Western Balkans is a region that he can try and he can use chemical weapons as he has already done in Syria”.
In the Balkans?
“There are three NATO countries here: Albania, North Macedonia, and Montenegro. Then, there is Kosovo, which isn’t part of NATO, but NATO is an integral part of it (with the peacekeeping mission KFOR). We need to take a further step towards NATO’s Program for Peace, as this is crucial for the security, and in this regard, we count on the help of Italy.
Serbia does not recognize you and certainly would not join NATO.
“They want European money and Russian weapons at the same time. In addition, Russian gas has an affordable price but in reality, it has the expensive price of being Kremlin’s puppet. Last year, 350 soldiers from Kosovo participated in NATO’s largest military exercise, Defender Europe 2021. Instead, Serbia participated in the ‘Slavic Shield’ along with Russia and Belorussia. They have these medieval, pan-Slavic and very dark myths”.
They accuse you of treating the Serb minority the way Ukrainians treated pro-Russians in Donbass.
“President Putin likes to mystify NATO intervention to justify Russian hegemony. We had elections in Kosovo and a referendum during the Serbian occupation, but the referendums in Crimea and Donbass were very different: the ballot boxes were in the hands of armed Russian soldiers. In our case, it was the UN and the International Court of Justice made it clear that independence does not violate international law.
What will happen now?
“There are elements that enable us to predict the future. Serbia spends 2.9% of GDP on the military and from 2015 to 2021 they have increased the budget by 70%. That increase prompted Croatia to spend $ 1 billion on fighter jets. Serbia has 14 Mig planes, 8 of them “donated” by Belarus and 6 by Russia. They have 30 T72 tanks, 30 armored vehicles and a Russian air defense system. In 2012, before Vucic, there were 2 joint military programs between Russia and Serbia. In 2016 there were 50, last year 100. Sputnik’s center in the Balkans is in Belgrade and 160 kilometers from Pristina there is the Russian “Humanitarian Center”, which are the heart of the hybrid war in the Western Balkans, which as it turned out was no substitute for the war but preparation for it”.
Are you afraid of a new Ukraine here?
Vucic has met with Putin 19 times. The last time, on 25 November, he spoke to him about “double standards” and “international hypocrisy” and showed him the north of Kosovo on the map. Gazprom has 56% of the Serbian oil industry and 51% of the large storage unit in Vojvodina. “Lukoil, Russian Railways, Vtb Bank, Rosatom, Roscosmos and Sberbank are all there, they are the hardware of the Russian presence in Serbia and Vucic is the software”
You are a nationalist leader. KLA nationalists are being tried in The Hague as terrorists.
“They fought the war with Serbia, we had two thousand martyrs. It is awkward to have high-ranking Kosovo politicians who fought for liberation in prison while Vucic, Milosevic’s minister, flirts with Putin. It is one of the European paradoxes”.
Last modified: August 11, 2022