Russia stirs tensions in Balkans area
NATO forces maintain uneasy peace between Putin-backed Serbs and Kosovo region
ZVECAN, Kosovo — In the forested mountains along the contested frontier between Serbia and Kosovo, a patrol of U.S. soldiers under NATO command trudged through snow and mud, keeping an eye out for smugglers or anyone else trying to cross the border. Given the bloody legacy of this area, the situation is quiet now, at least up here.
It is down below, in Serbia and Kosovo, where old angers are resurfacing as the Balkan region that spawned so much suffering over the last century is again becoming dangerously restive. And once again, Russia is stoking tensions, as it seeks to exploit political fissures in an area that was once viewed as a triumph of muscular U.S. diplomacy.
“Russia sees the West meddling in its backyard, and President Vladimir V. Putin wants to show he can reciprocate,” said Dimitar Bechev, an expert on Russia and the Balkans and head of the European Policy Institute in Sofia, Bulgaria. “They see the Balkans as the West’s underbelly, and they use it to throw their weight around and project power on the cheap.”
Nearly 18 years after a U.S.-led intervention ended Serb domination of Kosovo, the border patrols are part of the longest-running mission in NATO history. Even as the European Union has made limited progress in brokering a political settlement between Kosovo and Serbia, the presence of NATO forces has maintained an uneasy peace, with animosity between the minority Serbs and majority Albanian inhabitants of Kosovo still palpable.
Russia has historical ties with Serbia and vehemently opposed NATO’s war over Kosovo in 1999.
Moscow supported Bosnian Serbs when they held a controversial referendum in November that could lead to more — or even full — independence from Sarajevo. A month later, Russia backed fringe opposition parties in delicate national elections in Macedonia, another former Yugoslav republic.
In Montenegro, Serbia’s tiny neighbor and a former Russian ally set to join NATO, authorities said they had foiled an October coup attempt that had been orchestrated by the Russians.
Then in January, Moscow moved to help Serbia undermine Kosovo’s independence by supporting a series of provocations that have damaged diplomatic normalization efforts, known as the Brussels dialogue, that are sponsored by the European Union.
Most inflammatory, the Serbian government sent a Russianmade train from Belgrade to Mitrovica, adorning its coaches with signs declaring that “Kosovo is Serbia” in more than 20 languages. Kosovo stopped the train at the border, accusing Serbia of wanting to stage an invasion of northern Kosovo, modeled on Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Serbia, in turn, accused ethnic Albanians of laying mines along the railway tracks and planning a bombing campaign of Serbs.
Serbia’s president, Tomislav Nikolic, who is thought to be backed by Russia, threatened to send his troops back to Kosovo to protect the Serbs, if necessary.
Russia’s ambassador to Serbia, Aleksandr Chepurin, wrote in a recent editorial in Serbia’s daily Politika that Moscow would support “Serbia in preventing attempts to create an artificial pseudo-state of Kosovo.”
NATO’s task in the region is deeply complex. Troop levels have dropped to about 5,000 over the past decade and their job includes border patrols as well as navigating the sensitivities of an ethnically divided region.
In the absence of an army of their own, most ethnic Albanians see NATO troops as protectors.
“They are here to defend us from the Serbs when they want to storm back,” said Belkiza Sahatqiu, 46, a mother of three, who works in a shoe store in the Serbian part of Mitrovica.