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.
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All of the Balkans, legendary German Reichskanzler (Imperial Chancellor) Otto von Bismarck famously said, were not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. And Bismarck, a Prussian landowner or junker had nothing but amused contempt for Pomeranian grenadiers who were regarded as a standing joke in the German Army.
In 1890, brash, young new German Emperor Wilhelm II fired Bismarck after 28 years as minister-president of Prussia and then first Imperial Chancellor of Germany. He abandoned the priority policy of maintaining warm ties and close communications with Russia that Bismarck had always followed and scrapped the Dreikaiserbund, the League of ...
The Vlachs in Romania
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During the Kosovo conflict in 1999, military intervention by the US and NATO was precipitated by the use of outright lies and deceptions. The conflict was “ostensibly about preventing “genocide” on the scale of the Holocaust. This was the Big Lie. This was the Noble Lie. In fact, the conflict was about secession and separatism and the creation of a US-sponsored Greater Albania. Why was the Noble Lie needed? A deception was needed because US policy was supporting an illegal land grab, a forceful take-over of territory from a sovereign nation, Yugoslavia.
Why and how could such lies and deceptions occur ...
On April 7, two U.S. Navy battle ships USS Porter (DDG-78) and USS Ross launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at al-Shayrat military airfield in Syria’s Homs province from the Eastern Mediterranean. The U.S. strikes particularly targeted the main landing strip, aircraft, radio locators, air defense system and fuel stations.
The strike was approved by U.S. President Donald Trump, who said that the Syrian Air Force used affiliated al-Shayrat air base to prepare chemical attack on the city of Khan Shaykhun in Idlib. “It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and ...
2015 has become a year of living dangerously.
Wars are spreading across the globe.
Wars are escalating as new countries are bombed and the old are ravaged with ever greater intensity.
Countries, where relatively peaceful changes had taken place through recent elections, are now on the verge of civil wars.
These are wars without victors, but plenty of losers; wars that don’t end; wars where imperial occupations are faced with prolonged resistance.
There are never-ending torrents of war refugees flooding across borders. Desperate people are detained, degraded and criminalized for being the survivors and victims of imperial invasions.
Now major nuclear powers ...
IntroductionThis article deals with the question of political and human/minority rights in the region of Kosovo & Metohija ten years after the „March Pogrom 2004“ and fifteen years after the NATO’s military aggression on Serbia and Montenegro and occupation of the region. An importance of this research topic is in a fact that for the first time in the European history a terrorist-style and mafia-ruled (quasi)independent state was created by a full diplomatic, political, economic, military and financial sponsorship by the West under the umbrella of the NATO’s and the EU’s protective administration. The precedence of Kosovo’s self-proclaimed independence in ...
Being attacked from two sides simultaneously (terrorism and Russian threat) Europe has to decide what to do first: to counter terrorism or increasing Russian might. Choosing the priority is the most difficult challenge for the European States today. But Europe should make choice because states' budgets are not bottomless.
It is obvious, that as soon as the terrorism problem comes to the fore, NATO (first of all the US) diverts attention to other matters, such as the necessity to boost defence expenditures because of Russia, Syria, Afghanistan and other "annoying" countries.
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A great explanation from an excellent analyst of what happened in Serbia 20 years ago, and why the Ukraine feels like Deja Vu
‘Operation Storm’ in August 1995, when Croatia overran the Serb-inhabited territory of Krajina, was the biggest single instance of ethnic cleansing in the Yugoslav Wars, Because the attack was backed by the US, however, it was never treated as a crime.
Between August 4 and August 7, up to 2,000 people were killed and over 220,000 driven from their homes by the Croatian army. No “invaders,” these Serbs had lived in the Krajina – their word for borderlands – for centuries. The ...
1. Kosovo is not ancient Albanian landIts very name comes from the Serbian word “kos,” meaning blackbird. Its Albanian name, “Kosova,” means nothing whatsoever.Kosovo was the heartland of medieval Serbian state and the site of the 1389 battle in which both the Serbian prince and the Ottoman sultan died, checking the Turkish expansion into the Balkans for almost 70 years. Ethnic Albanians were settled there by the Ottomans over the intervening centuries, and became a majority due to pogroms and persecution of Serbs – which began under Ottoman rule but continued under Austro-Hungarian occupation in WWI and German/Italian occupation in ...
The forthcoming USA-Russian joint action against ISIS together with Iraqi-Syrian and Turkish military advance will soon neutralize ISIS possibilities to claim a stake of a statehood in the Levant region. Nonetheless, the number of radicalized persons in Europe is increasing as also the number of Jihadist fighters returning back into the EU-thus at first glance we should see a rise in the terrorism phenomenon in the coming years.
Furthermore the existence of multiple fronts where Jihadists are trained and fight nowadays such as :Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Sahel region, Nigeria, Sudan , Yemen, Sinai; brings us to the conclusion that we ...
SaveOrigins 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"]
Hiding Genocide in Kosovo: A Crime against God and Humanity is not a typical book of the current events or international affairs genre. Nor is it a journalistic exposé. It is simply a book of stories, true stories of what has taken place in Kosovo since the end of the 1999 war: shooting, beheading, burning, bomb attack, maiming, rape, abduction, torture, desecration, theft, mutilation, and harassment. While Western policymakers (the U.S., EU, UN, NATO, OSCE, etc.) delude themselves that they are buying the goodwill of the Muslim world by the sacrifice of a small Christian community in Kosovo, the perpetrators ...
The only discussion of principle emerging from the debates over Kosovar and Crimean independence is that initiated by Woodrow Wilson towards the end of World War One, about whether national minorities have the right to self-determination. Can a smaller group be compelled to be part of a larger state, or should they be permitted to secede? To what extent do minority rights amount to a freedom to determine one’s own sovereignty?
In June 1999 an international military force led by the United States annexed Kosovo, then a province in southern Serbia with a population of perhaps 1.6 million people. Virtually all ...
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It is apparent given the timelines and the lack of time given to verifying the validity of accusations concerning the gas attack in Homs, Syria, that plans had already been coordinated for such an attack. Watching the mainstream media the viewer receives the impression from the wording of the announcers reports and questions for the “experts” that the matter was already decided in favour of the U.S. military strike on the airbase. I see pictures of Colin Powell at the UN holding up glossy photos of supposed chemical weapons manufacturing plants.
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The State Department today released a long-awaited “retrospective” volume of declassified U.S. government documents on the 1953 coup in Iran, including records describing planning and implementation of the covert operation. The publication is the culmination of decades of internal debates and public controversy after a previous official collection omitted all references to the role of American and British intelligence in the ouster of Iran’s then-prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq. The volume is part of the Department’s venerable Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series.
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Historically and intuitively, Russia has fought for the survival of humanity. Of course, things are not always pronounced or defined in such terms. However, already on several occasions, this enormous country has stood up against the most mighty and evil forces that have threatened the very survival of our Planet.During the Second World War, the Soviet people, mainly Russians, sacrificed at least 25 million men, women and children, in the end defeating Nazism. No other country in modern history has undergone more.Right after that victory, Russia, alongside China and later Cuba, embarked on the most awesome and noble project of ...
Barack Obama is the first two-term American president to have presided over war every day of his tenure in office. He bequeaths to a Trump administration ongoing operations in Afghanistan, continuing drone strikes in northwest Pakistan, the consequences of the 2011 destruction of Libya, the instigation of civil war in Syria, US sponsorship of the brutal Saudi interventions in Yemen, and the civil conflicts in Ukraine, the Caucuses and across Africa.
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Saudi Prince Turki Al-Faisal speaking at the 2012 Clinton Global Initiative thanks former U.S. President Bill Clinton for “delivering Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo into Muslim hands and for near deliverance — within a hundred meters — of Palestine from occupation.”
Originally published on 2012-11-15
Author: Meira Svirsky
Source: Clarion Project
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Donate to Support Us
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 ...
The role of Jewish figures and that of the State of Israel in the Ukrainian crisis has not gone unnoticed considering that this community represents less than 1 percent of the population. However, a secret report in the hands of the Netanyahu administration confirms that Ashkenazi Jews do not originate from the Levant, but are the descendants of the Khazars. This little-known population founded a Jewish empire in the tenth century on the banks of the Black Sea. Therefore, some Zionists see in Ukraine a possible second Israel.The Times of Israel, an independent Israeli newspaper that counts among its staff ...
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