RT: Kosovo wants to establish an army and has received several Humvee armoured vehicles from the USA. Although there was official NATO restraint, how much is the establishment of a Kosovo Army a fixed development?
Marcus Papadopoulos: Kosovo is, effectively, a NATO protectorate today – and has been ever since Belgrade lost control of this Serbian province in 1999. It follows, therefore, that the illegal entity which is the Republic of Kosovo will begin the process of creating its own armed forces so that, in time, Kosovo will gain entry into NATO.
RT: The EU has rejected the introduction of Kosovo sanctions against Serbia and is concerned about the Kosovo army. How will the militarisation of Kosovo affect Serbia’s relations with the European Union?
MP: The European Union, at the behest of the US and NATO, is pursuing Serbian membership of the economic bloc so that this will greatly enhance the West’s control of the Balkans. And the Serbian Government, which is a pro-Western puppet one, is publicly condemning developments in Kosovo but in private is preparing the ground to recognise the independence of Kosovo, possibly through amending Serbia’s constitution so that Kosovo is left out of it, or on the basis of a land-swap between Belgrade and Pristina. Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, who has very close ties to Germany and the US, wants to deliver to his masters in the West Serbia’s recognition of Kosovan independence so that he can indefinitely preserve his hold on Serbia.
RT: The question of the Serbian minority in Kosovo remains unresolved. Still it is an important leverage for Belgrade in Kosovo. However, there are no concessions from Pristina that rejects an autonomy status. In which direction is this dispute moving, which also depends on the question of Kosovo’s independence?
MP: The illegal authorities in Pristina might be prepared to enter into a land-swap with Belgrade in order to allow Serbia to recognise Kosovo’s independence. We must be aware that the authorities in Belgrade and Pristina are firmly in the West’s political orbit hence both want to satisfy their Western masters (the West wants harmony between its colonies – Serbia and Kosovo – hence why it must resolve the issue of Serbia recognising Kosovan independence). A possible land-swap could involve northern Mitrovica going to Serbia and the Presevo Valley going to Kosovo.
RT: Do you think President Vucic will finally be forced to recognise Kosovo’s independence?
MP: Vucic cares about two things and two things only: maintaining his leadership of Serbia and satisfying his Western masters hence why he has permitted NATO to have supervisory offices in key Serbian institutions, such as the Defence Ministry. Vucic cares nothing for Kosovo and Metohija; if he did, he would have nothing to do with both NATO and the EU and he would not participate in meetings with American and European officials about Kosovo’s future. Kosovo and Metohija is legally, politically and historically an integral part of Serbia hence there is nothing to discuss about its future, especially with the very parties who tore the province away from Serbia.
One of the very few Serbian politicians who sincerely cared about Kosovo and Metohija was Oliver Ivanovic but he was assassinated in January of 2018. No one has been charged with his murder. It is widely believed that those responsible for his murder are hiding in Belgrade, with full protection from Vucic’s government. My own suspicion – and one widely shared by Serbs – is that he was murdered by the Serbian state because he stood in the way of Serbia’s recognising Kosovo as an independent country (Ivanovic was very popular amongst ordinary Serbs in Kosovo and Serbia in general).
RT: The Kosovo army will be a relatively small one, which, at first sight, will be less of a challenge to the Serbian security forces. What is Belgrade’s real concern when it comes to establishing an army in Kosovo?
MP: The concern amongst genuine Serbian patriots is that the illegal authorities in Kosovo could ignite an arms race between Serbia and its Kosovan province, which could ignite a war between the two and draw in neighbouring countries. The Balkans is one of the most volatile parts of the world. Furthermore, the illegitimate army in Kosovo will be manned and led by people who were members of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, a terrorist and organised crime network.
RT: What role would the Kosovo Army play from a regional perspective, bearing in mind that Croatia, Montenegro and Albania have joined NATO? After all, Serbia also conducts military exercises with NATO, but doesn’t that also create the feeling of being surrounded?
MP: As a result of Montenegro being a member of NATO, this means that NATO, in effect America, now controls the Adriatic Sea, which is of immense geo-strategic importance – this is what past empires had vied with each other, over hundreds of years, for control of, including the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. By Kosovo having its own army, this will pave the way for the province to eventually join NATO and thereby strengthen the West’s stranglehold of the Balkans. And one day, after Serbia has recognised Kosovan independence, Serbia will join NATO, too.
RT: To what extent is Russia, which is on Belgrade’s side on the Kosovo issue, perceived as an alternative political partner to Western actors among political elites in Serbia?
MP: Vucic says that he is carrying on Tito’s policy of non-alignment, meaning that Serbia is aligned neither with the West (US and NATO) nor the East (Russia). In practice, however, Vucic has moved Serbia even deeper into the West’s sphere of influence. And Russia is only too aware of the duplicitous game that Vucic is playing hence the tension between Vucic and Putin. But in reality, Russia doesn’t have as much influence in the Balkans as some people think. The West took hold of the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s and early 2000s, when Russia was reeling from the end of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Alas, it is very difficult for Russia to operate in the Balkans now, including in Serbia and Montenegro which are both run by governments whose key personnel have been chosen by Washington and Brussels.
RT: In addition to Russia, Serbia is cooperating increasingly closely with Turkey and China. This cooperation is primarily of an economic nature, but Turkey is also regarded as one of Kosovo’s biggest supporters and is now increasingly investing in Sandzak. Is there any hope in Belgrade of persuading Turkey to make political concessions in Kosovo in the long-term?
MP: Serbia is not run by patriots but by traitors, crooks and mobsters who have sold the country’s industries and resources to foreign players, including Turkey. The Turks are historic foes of the Serbs so there should be very little cooperation, if any, between Belgrade and Ankara but, alas, Serbia’s leaders do not care about their country, people, history and culture; rather, they care about preserving their positions of privilege and keeping their colonial masters happy. After all, why would the Serbian Government allow Turkey to stir up tension in Sandzak if they cared about Serbia’s territorial integrity? Turkey is a key strategic ally of the West hence the treacherous authorities in Belgrade are told to cooperate with Ankara. What has happened in Serbia since October 2000, is extremely sad and depressing.
Originally published on 2018-01-06
About the author: Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos specializes in Serbia and the rest of the former Yugoslavia.
This article was originally published on RT Germany in Deutsch.
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
The historical and political precedents for the creation of a greater Sqiperia or Greater Albania was set during World War II when the Kosovo and Metohija regions along with territory Southwest of lake Skutari from Montenegro and the western region of Southern Serbia, or Juzna Srbija (now part of Macedonia), were annexed to Albania by the Axis powers led by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, under a plan devised by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler to dismember and to destroy the Serbian Nation and people, which the Germans and Italians perceived as the main threat to the Axiss powers and ...
Terrorists attacked the Macedonian city of Kumanovo on 9 May, but one wouldn’t know that by reading the Western media’s reaction to the tragedy, despite the fact that they typically mention that 8 police officers were killed and another 37 wounded during the firefight. The media’s disingenuous ‘reporting’ reeks of ulterior motives, which is evidenced most visibly by their reluctance to use the word terrorist without putting it in questionable quotation marks, but also takes more subtle forms such as casting suspicion on the government for complicity in the attack and/or inferring that the attack was some type of legitimate ...
It is coming clear these days that many university professors are increasingly fat-cat and lazy, not doing any research once they get tenure. It is a system-wide corruption of the academy, so entrenched that central administrations have only led the corruption in multiplying salaries and offices with no committed function to advancement of learning and dissemination of knowledge – the constitutional and statutory objective of the academy the best are devoted to everywhere.This deep-structural degeneration is not confined to any one place or region. Regular contacts from other universities report a similar decadence. The solution is straightforward, but unspoken: (1) ...
Much is being written regarding the Charlie Hebdo issue in Paris, France. I do not condone any killing but at the same time I do not support issues that violate human rights, religious freedom or freedom of speech and thoughts. Using cartoons to condemn Divine thoughts and beliefs is utterly wrong because they fall under hate crimes and not under freedom of speech as we are lied about. The perpetrators of hate continue to be protected. Islam is under attack and its adherents, the Muslims, are being targeted through provocation. In a recent article Charlie Hebdo and Tsarnaev’s trial: Cui ...
In the sea of misinformation sloshing around the Western media during the Yugoslav civil wars, Serbs fared the worst. As a rule, they were accused even of atrocities that never happened, or were committed by others. The real truth would usually emerge several years later, from the mouths of international officials who at the time held important and responsible positions.American press and electronic media have “discovered” that the Serbs weren’t the “bad guys” to the extent the American reporters from the Balkans made them out to be. Even though Jack Kelly, a correspondent of USA Today, resigned years ago because ...
In this Talking Point Dr Marcus Papadopoulos says that ordinary people in the West were not told that after Serbia lost control of Kosovo, following the Nato bombing campaign against Belgrade and other Serbian cities in 1999, the region became a centre-point in Europe for the trafficking of people, drugs and organs. When Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, Western politicians hailed the event.The United States, which engineered the disputed act of independence, led the way in recognising the new Balkan state, with its allies quickly following suit.Many of the leading figures in today’s Kosovan government are ...
For decades former Nazis and German war criminals served at the highest echelons of NATO.Most of them were highly decorated Nazis, who later served in top positions in the Western German army, and were later promoted to serve as Commander and Chief of all NATO forces in Europe.This was not a unique event, but a very common phenomenon in post-WW2 Western Europe and especially in Western Germany.Nazi war criminals and people who supported and helped Hitler to carry out the holocaust and other war crimes, genocides, and crimes against Humanity were almost never put on trial for their crimes against ...
Or Yugoslavia’s for that matter. The level of western cynicism on “territorial integrity” is far greater than you probably know. The Kosovo-Crimea discrepancy is just the tip of the icebergEarlier this month Obama gave an earful to Putin (from a G7 meeting held 2,000 kilometres away from Moscow) complaining that this day and age you just can’t go around violating the “territorial integrity” and “sovereignty” of other countries:“Does he continue to wreck his country’s economy and continue Russia’s isolation in pursuit of a wrong-headed desire to recreate the glories of the Soviet empire? Or does he recognize that Russia’s greatness does not ...
Today the Old (dying out) Continent is under multi-faced crises pressure some of them having older roots but the others are the product of current political decisions and moves by the European decision-makers (and those who are behind them across the Ocean).The European oldest and mostly painful crisis-problem is a biological declination of the whole continent what from the economic point of view means, at least for the western countries, an import of a huge number of the „outsiders“ in order just to keep the same level of the economic production and national GDP. This solution of course produces a ...
Because the request for its membership is a serious breach of the international law, the Constitution of UNESCO, the legally binding UN Security Council resolution 1244 (1999) and the Charter of the UN whose Article 25 says that „The Members of the UN agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter”.Because according to the UN Security Council resolution 1244, which reaffirms the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Serbia), Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of the Republic of Serbia, under the administration of ...
Source: Rich WhitneyAbout the author: Rich Whitney is an attorney, actor, radio commentator and disk jockey, Illinois Green Party activist and former Green Party candidate for governor.Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]
PrefaceA geopolitical issue of South-East Europe became of very importance for the scholars, policymakers, and researchers with the question of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire as one of the most crucial features of the beginning of the 20th century in European history. A graduate collapsing of the one-time great empire was accelerated and followed by competition and struggling by both, the European Great Powers and the Balkan national states, upon the territorial inheritance of it. While the European Great Powers have the aim to obtain the new spheres of political-economic influence in South-East Europe, followed by the task to ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]Save
The Russian government’s sincere and diligent effort to prevent chaos in Syria and additional massive refugee flow into Europe, all the while avoiding conflict with Washington and its vassals, has been brought to an end by Washington’s intentional attack on a known Syrian army position, thus wrecking the cease fire agreement that Russia sacrificed so much to achieve.The response to this fact by the Obama regime’s ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, reveals that Washington will lie to the hilt in order to achieve its agenda of reducing Syria to the same chaos as Washington has reduced Iraq and Libya. ...
IntroductionThe aim of this article is to shed new light on the question of how the configuration of post-war Central and South-East Europe was shaped during WWII by the USSR through its relations with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (the CPY). Relationships between the CPY and the Soviet Union in 1941−1945 depended on the concrete military situation in Europe, and on the diplomatic relationships between the Soviet Union and the other members of the anti-fascist Alliance. For that reason, the Soviet Union and the CPY were cooperating in two directions during WWII. The concrete military situation in the battleground of ...
Following the death of President Tito in 1980 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia slid towards chaos. In the 1990s the plunge accelerated into civil war and one of the regions most affected was Kosovo from which Serbia withdrew after a NATO bomb and rocket offensive from 24 March to 11 June 1999. That blitz involved over 1,000 mainly American aircraft conducting some 38,000 airstrikes on Yugoslavia that killed approximately 500 civilians and destroyed much of the economic and social infrastructure of the region.NATO said its air bombardment was essential to halt repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and justified the ...
The world is lectured frequently by the United States of America — the One Indispensable Nation — about how to behave, on the grounds that, as President Obama declared, «from London and Prague, to Tokyo and Seoul, to Rio and Jakarta... there is a new confidence in our leadership».He didn’t mention Amman, Baghdad, Beijing, Beirut, Caracas or the capitals of so many other countries in which the majority of citizens, according to the Pew Research Centre and other pollsters such as Marketwatch, regard the United States as an aggressive and malign manipulator of world affairs.Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton went further than President Obama in glorifying ...
In Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (Metropolitan Books. New York. 2013), Turse writes that the US military’s official position, and the popular understanding in the US, is that leadership “has never condoned wanton killing or disregard for human life.” (2) On the rare occasions when atrocities are brought to light, they are blamed on low-level individuals and are said to be aberrations having nothing to do with official policy. The My Lai massacre, for example, was blamed on Lieutenant William Calley, who is said to have gone “crazy” (4,5) – although he and his unit ...
"We are a peaceful nation," claimed Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson in an interview with Katie Couric late last year.Carson voiced a view that is held by many in our society. Like most people around the world, we naturally like to think of ourselves as a peace loving country.Unfortunately, the record does not bear this out. It, in fact, indicates something quite opposite: The United States has had a long and bloody history of aggression and war making.A survey of history shows that America has either been involved in armed conflict or conducted some form of military operations during 223 ...
Post-colonial empires are complex organizations. They are organized on a multi-tiered basis, ranging from relative autonomous national and regional allies to subservient vassal states, with variations in between.In the contemporary period, the idea of empire does not operate as a stable global structure, though it may aspire and strive for such. While the US is the major imperial power, it does not dominate some leading global political-economic and military powers, like Russia and China.Imperial powers, like the US, have well-established regional satellites but have also suffered setbacks and retreats from independent local economic and political challengers.Empire is not a fixed ...
