Moscow is “alarmed” by the mounting tensions in Kosovo, which are the fault of “radical” ethnic Albanian authorities in the breakaway Serbian province and their Western sponsors, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday.
Authorities in Pristina have undertaken a “series of provocations” with the connivance of the US and the EU, using “ethnically motivated violence” to target the remaining Serbs in the province, Zakharova told reporters.
Prime minister Albin Kurti is seeking to distract from a failed domestic policy by “playing with fire, spinning up Serbophobic hysteria” and escalating tensions “closely approaching an armed conflict,” said Zakharova. Only the forbearance of local Serbs and the government in Belgrade is preventing things from sliding into open violence, she added.
“We stand in solidarity with the leadership of Serbia,” Zakharova said, endorsing Belgrade’s position that the Kosovo Albanians and the West “cynically ignore the fundamental UN Security Council Resolution 1244, the Brussels and Washington agreements.”
The UN resolution provided for a NATO presence in the province after the bombing of Serbia in 1999, while the 2013 Brussels agreement envisioned autonomy for the remaining ethnic Serbs.
Instead of pressuring the ethnic Albanians to abide by the signed agreements, the US and the EU have “blatantly sabotaged” the Brussels document, while preferring the “vicious practice” of bullying and blaming the Kosovo Serbs, Zakharova noted.
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