As tensions flared up within the Balkans after ultimate month’s standoff over license plates in Kosovo, questions arose over the potential of a renewed war in Europe’s southeast.
The leaders of Serbia and Kosovo met in Brussels on Thursday for every other EU-mediated try to get to the bottom of lingering problems between the 2 states that experience spiked tensions within the Balkans.
Kosovo is a former province of Serbia, which has refused to recognise the rustic’s 2008 declaration of independence.
That got here after a NATO intervention in 1999 put a forestall to Belgrade’s bloody crackdown towards ethnic Albanians within the nation of two million, led by means of former president and strongman Slobodan Milošević.
After the withdrawal of Serbian forces in 1999 and the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement, Kosovo become a UN protectorate, with a big world peacekeeping project in position since.
Florian Bieber, Professor for Southeast European History and Politics on the University of Graz, advised Euronews that large-scale combating most probably received’t come to go.
“There is a NATO mission in place since 1999. Serbia has no interest in an armed confrontation… Both sides like to sometimes play with fire and bring up that threat of conflict rather than being interested in a real one.”
And the continued tensions between the 2 aspects are hampering each international locations’ EU accession hopes.
“Neither of them can join the EU until that relationship is settled. Kosovo is not recognised by five EU member states,” Bieber stated, “and Serbia cannot really join without recognising Kosovo one way or another.”
Serbia and Russia have lengthy maintained shut family members, and the Balkan nation has refused to enroll in western sanctions towards Moscow over the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in overdue February. This resulted in additional questions as to the place precisely Serbia sees its long term within the world neighborhood.
“It’s also doubtful whether the current Serbian government actually wants to join the EU,” Bieber added. “It likes to talk about it but it’s not quite clear whether it’s committed.”
And Russia’s blockading of Kosovo’s accession to international establishments just like the UN and Interpol bureaucracy the root of its heat family members with Serbia.
“Russia has sometimes said that, if the west were to recognise Crimea or some of the breakaway territories of Georgia under Russian control, then it might reciprocate by recognising Kosovo. So from that point of view, Russia benefits from this frozen conflict in a certain way,” Bieber illustrated.
In the wake of the warfare in Ukraine, the frozen war in Kosovo might grow to be extra essential, as Russia seeks to stay pleasant international locations on its aspect.