Serbia has raised the alert level of its army near Kosovo, the Defense Ministry said on Sunday (September 26th). He accuses his neighbor of “provocations” after the recent deployment in the area of a special police force, as AFP reported.
The Kosovar Police Special Forces (ROSU) were deployed on Monday, September 20, near two border crossings in northern Kosovo, an area mostly populated by Serbs who refuse the authority of the Kosovar government. This deployment of troops, which angered the Serbs, followed the decision of the Kosovo government to ban the entry into its territory of vehicles with Serbian license plates, a “measure of reciprocity”, according to Pristina.
Blockages
Hundreds of Serbs have since protested against this decision and have blocked traffic on the roads leading to two border posts with trucks. “After the provocations of the ROSU units, which have been in northern Kosovo for a week, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, gave the order to raise the alert of some of the units of the Serbian army and police, ”reads a statement from the Serbian Defense Ministry. Serbian fighter jets flew over the border area again late Sunday morning, after making several overflights on Saturday, an AFP correspondent reported on the spot.
Serbian Defense Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic on Sunday morning visited these troops on alert in two military bases, including one a few kilometers from the border, as well as “battle groups” deployed “in the direction of the administrative crossing of Jarinje” , according to the same source. The border crossings between Serbia and Kosovo are designated as “administrative crossings” by Belgrade which does not recognize the independence that its former province proclaimed in 2008.
Visit interrupted
During his visit to the troops, Minister Stefanovic was accompanied by the head of the armed forces, General Milan Mojsilovic, and the Russian ambassador in Belgrade, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, the statement said. Russia does not recognize Kosovo’s independence either, unlike most Western countries, including the United States. For its part, Albania, “concerned about the escalation of the situation”, asked Belgrade, through its diplomacy, “to withdraw the armed forces deployed on the border with Kosovo”. “Due to the developments in the north of the country,” the President of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani, on Saturday interrupted her visit to New York, where she was attending the UN General Assembly, to return to Kosovo, said her cabinet.
