Tensions Flare on Kosovo-Serbian Border Amid Protests and Gunfire

“We will pray for peace and seek peace, but there will be no surrender and Serbia will win,” President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia mentioned on Sunday at a news convention. “If they dare to persecute and mistreat and kill Serbs, Serbia will win,” he continued, including later, “We’ve never been in a more difficult, complicated situation than today.”

Mr. Vucic, who convened a high-level assembly of safety and navy officers on Sunday night time, mentioned that the Kosovar authorities was making an attempt to cast him in the identical mild as President Vladimir V. Putin by blaming the unrest on Serbia’s shut relationship with Russia, a fellow Slavic and Orthodox Christian nation.

Kosovo’s chief, Mr. Vucic mentioned throughout Sunday’s news convention, was making an attempt to reap the benefits of the worldwide temper by projecting that “big Putin gave orders to little Putin, so the new Zelensky, in the form of Albin Kurti, will be a savior and fight against the great Serbian hegemony.”

Vladimir Djukanovic, a Serbian member of Parliament from Mr. Vucic’s ruling social gathering, additionally linked the border spat to the warfare in Ukraine, tweeting, “Seems to me that Serbia will be forced to begin the denazification of the Balkans,” an ominous reference to Russia’s justification for the invasion of Ukraine.

Serbia, a candidate to hitch the European Union, has maintained shut ties with Moscow and has not joined Western sanctions on Russia, although it did vote in favor of a United Nations decision condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Belgrade and Moscow share animosity for the NATO navy alliance due to its bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, when Mr. Vucic was a spokesman for the Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

NATO nonetheless maintains a peacekeeping presence in Kosovo, with a pressure of roughly 3,700 troops. In a news launch, NATO mentioned its pressure on the bottom was “ready to intervene if stability is jeopardized.”