A flag of Serbia is waved as thousands of protesters march in a rally to call for the resignation of top officials and a reduction in violence in the media, after two mass shootings that killed a month ago 18 people, half of them children, in Belgrade in June. 3.ANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP/Getty Images
To see how the world map is being repainted in two colors following the effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, let’s look south and west, to a corner of Europe we usually ignore.
Two recent events in the former Yugoslavia show the extent to which the conflict has become the only important issue in international relations.
One of them is the surprising transformation of Aleksandar Vucic, the rogue president of Serbiainto an apparent voice of anti-Moscow resistance.
Mr Vucic, a right-wing nationalist who started out in politics as information minister for strongman leader Slobodan Milosevic, is Europe’s most loyal adherent to Russia. Since taking office in 2017, he has met with President Vladimir Putin every three months, embraced Mr. Putin’s conspiracy theories about Western conspiracies and steered his country’s economy toward Moscow.
This week, however, we saw a sharp turnaround. Mr. Vucic acknowledged that Belgrade was now exporting weapons to Ukraine, through intermediaries, and that this would not contribute to the Russian war effort. Although it still does not participate in Western sanctions, Serbia, he implies, is now effectively a country supporting Kiev: “We have joined all the UN resolutions” condemning the second invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he said. told the Financial Times, and “we will not be a hub for re-exporting something to Russia”. And his meetings with Mr. Putin stopped in 2022, he said, and he has had no contact with the Kremlin since then: “This has never happened before.”
The other event occurred a week earlier, in this landlocked country south of Serbia. Kosovo, which in 2008 became the last state in the former Yugoslavia to declare independence, has seen periodic outbreaks of street violence between its Albanian-speaking and predominantly Muslim population, its government and police, and the ethnically Serbian minority population. North. Belgrade, which does not officially recognize Kosovo’s sovereignty, has often encouraged these acts of violence, as it likely did when ethnic Serbs attacked NATO peacekeepers last month, their shooting them with guns and painting Russian army “Z” symbols on their vehicles.
This time something different happened. The United States and the European Union, which have together ensured the independence and security of Kosovo for 20 years, have turned against Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, even threatening his country with sanctions. They blamed Mr. Kurti for provoking the outbreak of violence after he installed ethnic Albanian mayors and police forces in Serb-majority towns after their citizens boycotted municipal elections, and rejected the plans led by Westerners aimed at creating a sort of “distinct society” in the province. the North.
Jeffrey Hovenier, the American ambassador to Kosovo, declared on May 30, Washington would “cease all its efforts to help Kosovo obtain its recognition… and its integration into international organizations.” Years of efforts to broker peace between Kosovo and Serbia had been undermined by Mr. Kurti’s recalcitrance, he said. Its European allies have strongly implied that they are also on the verge of liberating Kosovo.
To make sense of these shocking reversals, one must understand the two hard-headed Balkan leaders and their relationships with Western institutions.
I first meeting Albin Kurti in 2006, when he was a young activist who spent his nights deflating the tires of UN peacekeeping vehicles and painting anti-UN slogans on walls. He told me that he considers the UN to be a “neocolonial institution” that “prevents us from becoming a nation.” When UN forces were replaced by EU peacekeepers in 2008, he said the same thing about them. His hostility toward Western multilateral institutions continued as head of government, sometimes for good reasons. But that makes him a dangerous source of friction in a region that Washington and Brussels desperately need on their side.
I met Aleksandar Vucic for the first time around the same time. He, too, was opposed to the EU and NATO, although for different reasons, rooted in NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999. But he ultimately realized that the only way to become president was to support Serbia’s path to EU membership; the Serbian people are overwhelmingly in favor of visa-free travel and better livelihoods that come with EU membership.
Mr. Vucic therefore juggled his loyalty to Brussels and Moscow – until this week, when he abandoned the latter. American Ambassador Christopher Hill said he told the Serbian leader that “Ukraine is absolutely critical and we are at a point where all hands must be on deck.” And Mr. Vucic faces a tough re-election campaign amid massive protests against the extreme violence that has erupted under his watch.
Ukraine itself was once a country whose leader supported Mr. Putin while its people favored the EU. Resolving this dilemma required a revolution in 2014 and a change of leaders, and showed the world how important the path to EU membership can be for maintaining democracy in countries. Mr. Vucic is obviously betting that he can resolve this dilemma himself, if it keeps him in power.