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Serbia and the War in Ukraine

The war in Ukraine has created a situation in which the Republic of Serbia may see an opportunity to take up some unfinished business; for this purpose, Serbia has recently been purchasing armaments from Russia and China and has sought also to purchase 12 fighter jets from France. The Serbian government does not recognize the sovereignty of Kosovo and regards the land controlled by Prishtina as rightfully Serbian, while the Republika Srpska (the Serb part of Bosnia-Herzegovina) has sought for years to secede from union with the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and to unite with Serbia. The weapons may figure as a way to pressure and intimidate the Albanians of Kosovo to return to the negotiating table and to present the Bosnian government in Sarajevo with a fait accompli.

Serbia and the War in Ukraine
 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

Russia’s war against Ukraine has had political and strategic repercussions in the Western Balkans, creating a context in which Serbian dreams of expansion have been revived, albeit in a less ambitious form than were pursued by President Slobodan Milošević in the initial phase of the 1991-1995 War of Yugoslav Succession. Among the effects of the war in Ukraine is a pervasive sense that many things have become possible and, in particular, Belgrade’s earlier program to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina and to re-establish its hegemony in Kosovo seems now to be revived, though conversations in Belgrade and Banja Luka (the latter, the capital of the Serb-controlled part of Bosnian-Herzegovina known as the Republika Srpska or RS) revolve around fantasies of conjoining only the RS, rather than all of Bosnia-Herzegovina (as Milošević attempted in the first years of the 1990s),1 with Serbia. In Kosovo, Prime Minister Albin Kurti has expressed concern that there is a grave risk of armed conflict with Serbia.2 NATO Councils take this risk seriously and, already in March, declared that the alliance was “ready to intervene if stability would be endangered.”3 NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated this pledge in mid-August 2022, noting that NATO already had more than 3,700 peacekeeping troops in Kosovo and was prepared, if necessary, to “move forces, deploy them where needed and increase our presence.”4

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