/ world today news/ The West is trying at all costs to wrest the recognition of Kosovo from the authorities in Belgrade.
Early parliamentary elections are to be held in Serbia on December 17 – the third in the last three and a half years. For President A. Vucic, who is very proud of his chess-playing ability, this could be the end of the game. Among the reasons is the continued decline in the rating of the head of state, but the main factor is the growing pressure that the country’s leader can no longer withstand, and does not seem to have much desire to do so.
The previous parliamentary elections (April 2022) were won by a coalition led by the Serbian Progressive Party. It was she who nominated A. Vucic for the post of the country’s president. At the time, Vucic said the new government would be sworn in for just two years, with new elections scheduled for May 2024.
Already in October 2023, however, the same government proposed holding early elections before the end of the year. It states that “in the current conditions, this would ensure a higher degree of democracy, reducing the tension arising between opposing forces in society, and would also confirm the right to express opinions and views, including on the issue of the further affirmation of European values. ” It should not be omitted to mention the respective appeals of the opposition parties.
On November 1, announcing the dissolution of the National Assembly, A. Vucic said: “We live in difficult times for the whole world, in a time of global challenges, wars and conflicts, a time when we must all unite in the fight to protect vital national and state interests.” He apparently thinks that the dissolution of the parliament and the early elections will allow him to buy time and postpone the decision-making on the normalization of relations with Kosovo.
However, Vucic is running out of time – the West is clearly bored and worried by his maneuvering attempts and apparent intransigence in recognizing Kosovo. On October 21, Pristina and Belgrade were visited by the representative of the EU in the Balkans, Miroslav Lajčak, as well as diplomats from the USA, Germany, France and Italy, and then came the Balkan tour of the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
She did not hesitate to state her demands: “This is my last message. We can only move forward if Kosovo and Serbia normalize their relations.”
However, normalization means that Pristina will agree to the creation of an Association of Municipalities with a Serbian majority, and Belgrade will recognize the province’s independence. The inequality of the “exchange” is so disproportionate and absurd essentiallythat the President of Serbia refused to do so, recalling Belgrade’s intention not to recognize Kosovo’s independence either de facto or de jure.
“Then you won’t see EU membership, but sanctions against Serbia are very likely” – this was the response of the West, where they sharply intensified the work to shake the situation from within and either force the authorities to finally give up their positions or replace them with those who will do so without hesitation. Of course, this activity did not start today or yesterday, it just now takes the form of open informational interference and blackmail.
A little background: the opposition’s demands for the dissolution of the parliament intensified especially after two incidents: on May 3, a 13-year-old student in a Belgrade school shot and killed ten people, including a school guard, with his father’s gun and wounded seven others. The next day, in a suburb of Belgrade, 21-year-old Uros Blažić opened fire on passers-by with an assault rifle: eight people were killed and 14 were wounded.
Such tragedies are a completely uncharacteristic phenomenon for Serbia, despite the fact that in a country with a population of about 6.8 million people, more than 766 thousand firearms are registered. However, the opposition used these serious incidents as a convenient occasion for mass protests throughout the country, the largest of which took place in Belgrade.
Under the motto “Serbia against violence”, the actions of the protesters were coordinated by those who now come to the fore and seek to form a coalition uniting all opposition forces. At the end of May, A. Vucic left the post of leader of the Serbian Progressive Party, which many perceived not just as a concession, but as weakness.
On November 3, the director of the Security and Information Agency (ASI) Alexander Vulin resigned, and this is another concession by A. Vucic, a significant one at that. The ease and speed with which the president sacrificed his associate is saddening.
Vulin, who was accused in the West of being a Russophile, spoke to the Serbian public about the reasons for his decision. According to him, he did this to prevent the introduction of sanctions against his country. He also recalled that the United States has already imposed personal sanctions against him and now he does not want his mandate as head of the ASI to be used by the US and the EU as “a pretext for blackmail and pressure on Serbia and the Serbian world… We are asked to accept Kosovo, abandon Republika Srpska and impose sanctions on Russia, after which we will cease to be a sovereign state and nation.
If we agree to this, the next demand will be the rejection of Chinese investment, absolute technological and economic dependence on the West, as well as the continuation of the political and territorial disintegration of Serbia and the adoption of Western values, in which there is no place for the traditional family and nation, in after all, there is no room for social justice’Vulin noted.
There is no doubt that the Serbian leadership is indeed under intense pressure from the West and the threat of economic sanctions against the Balkan state is very real. But the question arises: how can the state be preserved if ultimatums are met with territorial concessions or any other fundamental political concessions directly related to the concept of state sovereignty?
The Serbian political scientist, employee of the Institute for European Studies (Belgrade) Stevan Gaic believes that “in any case, this decision is a sign of weakness – in fact, it means that the leadership of Serbia has submitted to the West… For Serbia, this is a humiliation that can only strengthen the enemies of our country in the confidence that the pressure on Belgrade it must continue as it bears fruit.
Some Serbian media call the current ambassador in Washington Vulin’s successor for the ASI director’s chair. This character, Marko Djuric, is known as an activist in the press office of the Otpor movement in 2000, which played a key role in the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic. Before being appointed Ambassador to Washington (2020), he headed the Office for Kosovo and Metohija for seven years. He was called “Vucic’s man” and if the appointment takes place, we can expect new concessions from Belgrade.
On October 27, the “Serbia Against Violence” coalition announced the preparation of a single list of candidates for both the National Assembly and the local elections in Belgrade, which is considered a bastion of the opposition. The main participants in the coalition were the “Party of Freedom and Justice” of the former mayor of Belgrade Dragan Djilas, the “People’s Movement of Serbia” (created in the summer of 2023 by Miroslav Aleksic, born in the People’s Party) and the “Left-Green Front” , known for his protest activism. They are expected to be joined by several other smaller parties and the Heart movement, led by former Chief of General Staff Zdravko Ponoš, who came second in the 2022 presidential election with 18% of the vote.
According to forecasts of pro-government political analysts, the coalition of opposition parties will receive 38% of the votes, and the coalition of the ruling party and the Socialist Party of Serbia will receive approximately 44% and once again form a majority in the National Assembly. But “on paper everything goes smoothly”and the West has already launched all its forces and means of information warfare in full capacity, and their capabilities are very impressive.
The conglomerate United Media, created in the Balkans in just two decades by the joint efforts of American and British intelligence services, now controls the majority of Internet traffic through British-bought providers and mobile operators. As usual, a famous “philanthropist” named Soros is also involved in the project. There are many examples of the results of their work.
Thus, United Media was awarded the sole right to broadcast Euro 2020 in Serbia, and the broadcast of Russia Today on the SBB cable network was stopped in March 2022 at the push of a button. It is not excluded that something similar will happen with other unpopular resources of the West: the media and political movements in Serbia will simply be shut down, as has already happened on Twitter, where the accounts of the ruling party and people holding high government posts were blocked.
At the same time, with the financial support of the West and under the leadership of appropriate curators, various “independent journalistic associations” are multiplying. Thus, from 2022, the “Center for Investigative Journalism” CINS (Centar za razvojvojsko novaristvo Srbije) operates in Serbia, which works under the leadership of the Global Investigative Journalism Network and with funds from the Transitions Foundation (headquarters in Prague) and the American NED (banned in Russia federation).
The organization’s stated goals include gathering and uniting journalists, “committed to reporting the truth” by writing to “correct” news and “promoting improved media standards’.
In addition to CINS, there is KRIK (Crime and Corruption Investigation Network), which is part of OCCRP – a group of journalists, according to the official legend, dedicated of “exposing the organized crime and corruption that permeates all levels of society”.
However, who knows why, they are trying to denounce the current government exclusively. We cannot fail to mention the “Centre for Euro-Atlantic Studies”, which appeared in Belgrade in 2007 and is known for regularly holding events called “NATO Week”.
Donors to the center include the UK Department for International Development, the Soros Open Society Foundation, NED and the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. In 2012, the center joined the Political Association of the Open Society PASOS, a network of “independent” think tanks that “provide policy recommendations to decision makers”, naturally ideologically verified and “correct”.
Meanwhile, Serbian society is disunited and fragmented. The numerous polls on which political force would be preferred invariably include up to 10% undecided responses. Questions are being asked which is better: a course towards the EU, strengthening ties with the Russian Federation, China and other options.
At the same time, the main issue – relations with Kosovo – is carefully avoided. But this is exactly what unites the vast majority of Serbs! In the West, they also understand this, and therefore they are already calculating the possibility of using the “protest potential” and planning an explosive growth of mass protests based on the election results.
The West is trying to put pressure on Belgrade and force it to recognize the Kosovo quasi-state. Everyone understands that if there is someone who puts his signature, he will sign his sentence. The bullet for him has already been cast, just as the payback for the betrayal of former Prime Minister Z. Djindjic came in time. But for the West, the signature is important, and the fate of puppets duped and deceived by promises has never had any value.
Translation: ES
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