BELGRADE, Serbia — Serbia’s strongman chief, Aleksandar Vucic, is bored to death with being reviled as a “little Putin” intent on aggression in opposition to his nation’s fragile neighbors within the Balkans.
For starters, Mr. Vucic famous wryly in an interview within the library of the presidential palace this month, “I am almost two meters tall.” That makes him about 6-foot-5. (Vladimir V. Putin is an estimated 5-foot-7 at maximum, despite the fact that the Russian president’s precise top, a delicate subject for the Kremlin, is a secret.)
Behind Mr. Vucic’s levity over bodily stature, alternatively, lurks a major query that torments the Balkans and preoccupies Western diplomats.
Is Russia, mired in a brutal conflict in Ukraine, the usage of Serbia to stir department in Europe and impress renewed struggle within the former Yugoslavia to distract NATO from the fight raging to the east?
Those fears flared remaining week when an esoteric dispute over license plates between Serbia, which is certain to Russia via historical past, faith and deep hostility towards NATO, and the previously Serbian province of Kosovo ended in unruly protests, roadblocks and gunfire — environment off alarm bells within the Atlantic alliance.
The unrest in Kosovo, and traces in within reach Bosnia and Herzegovina led to via Milorad Dodik, the belligerent, Moscow-backed chief of the ethnic Serb enclave there, and via hard-line Croat nationalists have ended in warnings that Russia is making an attempt to stoke tensions, stilled however by no means in reality resolved, from the Balkan wars of the Nineteen Nineties.
“Russia calculates that the more time the West spends sweating in the Balkans, the less time it will spend sweating in Russia’s backyard,” mentioned Vuk Vuksanovic, a researcher on the Belgrade Center for Security Policy.
“But there are limits on what Russia can do,” Mr. Vuksanovic added. “It needs local elites and these don’t want to be sacrificed for Russian interests.”
America’s ambassador to Serbia, Christopher R. Hill, a veteran diplomatic troubleshooter whose contemporary appointment signaled Washington’s heightened anxiousness over the Balkans, mentioned that Russia, providing best “economic blackmail” and “chaos throughout the region,” had discovered few takers.
“Despite Russia’s influence on Serbia’s energy sector and despite its pervasive disinformation efforts here, Serbs have decided that their future is with Europe and the West,” Mr. Hill mentioned.
Russian information shops and social media accounts have for months pumped out incendiary experiences of ethnic Serbs in Kosovo and Bosnia struggling insupportable oppression. The experiences, which in large part reprise Russian propaganda in regards to the struggling of ethnic Russians dwelling in Ukraine, have emboldened hard-line, pro-Moscow Serb nationalists.
Anger a number of the round 65,000 ethnic Serbs who nonetheless are living in Kosovo, inhabited most commonly via ethnic Albanians and wrenched from Serbian keep an eye on via a NATO bombing marketing campaign in 1999, has simmered for years. But tensions spiked dangerously on July 31 in accordance with a plan, later postponed, via the Kosovan government to prohibit Serbian license plates and identification paperwork beginning Aug. 1.
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Slavisa Ristic, former mayor of Zubin Potok, a the town in northern Kosovo inhabited nearly completely via ethnic Serbs, mentioned that he would by no means voluntarily put Kosovan plates on his automobile as a result of that may imply spotting Kosovo’s independence, one thing that just about all Serbs, together with President Vucic, say is out of the query.
Borko Stefanovic, an opponent of Mr. Vucic who chairs the Serbian Parliament’s overseas affairs committee, mentioned that the automobile plates factor was once “so minuscule it is absolutely ridiculous.”
“But,” he added, “here in the Balkans, such symbolic things are of huge importance.”
Last week, Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary common, tweeted that he had spoken with Mr. Vucic in regards to the flare-up in Kosovo, pointing out that the alliance, which leads a peacekeeping project within the former Serbian territory, “stands ready to intervene if stability is jeopardized.”
Also calling for calm has been Mr. Hill, the U.S. ambassador. In an interview in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, Mr. Hill mentioned that whilst he thought to be armed struggle not likely he had advised Mr. Vucic: “Wars have started over land, money, even a beautiful woman. But this would be the first war I’ve ever heard of that was started over a license plate.”
Rife with possible flashpoints, each symbolic and of substance, the lands of the previous Yugoslavia mirror on a smaller scale the forces at play in Ukraine: a regional hegemon, on this case Serbia, seething over misplaced territory and scattered ethnic relations; and a geopolitical tug of conflict between Russia and the West.
A senior legislator from Mr. Vucic’s celebration, Vladimir Djukanovic, has seized at the thought of Serbia as an avenger that “will be forced to begin the denazification of the Balkans,” an ominous echo of Russia’s mentioned purpose in Ukraine and of Belgrade’s pursuit of a “Greater Serbia” within the Nineteen Nineties.
Mr. Vucic, who publicly denounced Mr. Djukanovic’s observation as “stupid” and “irresponsible,” mentioned: “We have our country. We are not interested in expanding our borders and getting into any fights with our neighbors.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry added gas to the Kosovo fireplace remaining week via accusing ethnic Albanian “radicals” of seeking to eject ethnic Serbs from the territory and of scary unrest “to launch a violent scenario.”
Mr. Putin has again and again cited NATO’s army intervention in strengthen of Kosovo’s separation from Serbia in 1999 as a justification for Russia’s aggression in opposition to Ukraine, which he claims is to give protection to ethnic Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk.
“Putin is using and smartly learning from your mistakes, which you are never going to admit,” Mr. Vucic mentioned, regarding the West.
Most Western nations acknowledge Kosovo as an impartial state, however different international locations, together with Serbia, Russia, China and 5 European states don’t.
“Kosovo for Russia is the perfect low-cost investment that just keeps on giving,” mentioned Mr. Vuksanovic, the Belgrade-based researcher. Nonetheless, he added, Russia’s capability for mischief-making within the Balkans has been significantly constrained via the conflict in Ukraine.
“There is less now that Russia can actually do. Its abilities are more limited and it is more isolated. Its resources are focused on Ukraine,” he mentioned.
Take, for instance, Mr. Dodik. Boasting of robust strengthen from Russia, the Bosnian Serb chief provoked a probably violent disaster overdue remaining yr with a vow to arrange his personal ethnic Serb military and successfully secede from Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Yet in April, two months into the conflict in Ukraine, Mr. Dodik all at once introduced that he was once suspending his secessionist plans. “He looked at Ukraine and saw how the West reacted to Russia. He realized that he had to tone things down,” Mr. Vuksanovic mentioned.
While Russia has been extensively accused of encouraging Mr. Dodik’s secessionist ambitions, Mr. Vucic is credited via diplomats within the area with serving to rein them in.
Mr. Vucic mentioned that he had spoken to Mr. Dodik about his secessionist mission however declined to mention what he had advised him. “Serbia,” Mr. Vucic added, “has always supported the territorial integrity of Bosnia” as outlined via the 1995 Dayton peace settlement.
Mr. Vucic mentioned that he had not anything to do with the new protests over the license plates in northern Kosovo, announcing that ethnic Serbs there have been “100 percent fed up,” specifically with the Kosovar govt’s refusal to enforce key portions of a 2013 settlement that promised them a measure of self-rule.
Beneath layers of intrigue and native political feuds, alternatively, something turns out transparent: “We are caught in a proxy war like Ukraine, only on a much smaller scale,” mentioned Mr. Stefanovic, the Serbian overseas affairs committee chairman.
That fight, lamented Mr. Vucic, has put his nation in a painful vise, squeezed between dependency on Russia for power and diplomatic strengthen over Kosovo, and calls for from Western powers that it sign up for efforts to punish Moscow for the Ukraine invasion.
“I get pressure from them every single day to impose sanctions on Russia,” Mr. Vucic mentioned. That, he added, is not going to occur, no less than now not till Serbia’s stalled, 13-year-old software to sign up for the European bloc choices up velocity. (More than 80 % of Serbs oppose sanctions on Russia, consistent with a up to date opinion ballot.)
To Moscow’s fury, Serbia in March sponsored a United Nations answer hard that Russia halt its invasion, a vote that ended in an uproar from radical Serb nationalists, who denounced Mr. Vucic as a “traitor.”
But Serbia’s refusal to enforce sanctions has equipped ammunition to those that view Mr. Vucic as a Russian puppet.
Noting that Serbia “remains the only country in Europe that refuses to sanction Russia,” the top minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, in April denounced Mr. Vucic as “Serbia’s little Putin.” “Peace and security in the Western Balkans have never been more threatened,” he mentioned.
Mr. Vucic pushed aside Mr. Kurti’s accusation.
“Kurti wants to be a ‘little Zelensky’ fighting ‘little Putin,’” Mr. Vucic mentioned, regarding Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. “This is his narrative — that Vucic is a terrible nationalist who wants to fight against everybody.”
“It is not true at all,” he added.
But, with such a lot drive bearing down on Serbia from either side, Mr. Vucic conceded, “We are stuck, and we know this.”
