Kosovan police load up with weapons on the Serbian border as tensions rise
Security ramped up as fears grow that Serbia’s president Aleksander Vucic is planning an invasion aided by his ally Vladimir Putin
Danielle Sheridan, DEFENCE EDITOR, IN KOSOVO
Before the Kosovan police begin their patrol of the border with Serbia, they load up the car with weaponry: AK-47s are strapped to the back of car seats, handguns dropped in the footwells, and drones and bulletproof vests stuffed in the Land Rover’s boot. This is now standard protocol on one of the most volatile frontiers on the European continent.
When people ask Venton Elshani, the deputy police commander of North Kosovo, what the situation is like, he simply shows them the preparations he takes for patrol. “You see the weapons?” he said, before taking The Telegraph out to the border, “these are for police officers to carry. The situation is not good.”
Since Kosovo won independence from Yugoslavia in a war that ended in 1999, it has played host to a small community of ethnic Serbs in the northern border region. Tensions with the ethnic Albanian majority have surged lately. Alexander Vucic, Serbia’s president, has hinted at an invasion. Nationalists urge him to act to “protect” the Serbs forced to live under Kosovan rule. [Kosovo did not “win independence in 1999”. From 1998 onwards the West led by the USA supported the violent secessionist KLA in its murderous attacks on Serbian police in Kosovo. Any action taken against the KLA was exaggerated as persecution. This process culminated in an ultimatum from the West to allow NATO complete access to Yugoslav territory or else be attacked. NATO bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days without authorisation by the UN – and in breach of its own Statute which explicitly defined Nato as a defensive alliance only. This was therefore a flagrant violation of International Law. Despite the immense power deployed Yugoslavia continued to resist but agreed to a UN Security Resolution 1244 (official text) which confirmed that Kosovo remained part of Yugoslavia but required Yugoslav forces to leave to be replaced by a peace force (KFOR) under the command of NATO which was entrusted to disarm the KLA and end persecution of any group. The KLA was not disarmed and Serbs and other non-Albanians were persecuted and in many cases either murdered or expelled. In 2008, after many pogroms against Serbs and other minorities, the province dominated completely by Albanians declared independence. Some countries, encouraged by USA, recognised this UDI but many others did not including several in the EU. Indeed some have changed their mind over recognition.]
Fears of a fresh war spiked in 2023 when a group of Serbian gunmen stormed across the border into the northern village of Banjska and barricaded themselves in its monastery. Three of a suspected 30 militants were killed in a shoot-out. One of Commander Elshani’s men lost his life in the crossfire. [‘Serbian gunmen’ were in reality armed Serbian police who had intervened – in the absence of any help from UN / Nato forces who were in Kosovo precisely to keep the peace – to protect local Kosovo Serbs from incessant harassment by KLA forces.]
Since that day, the officer and his team have conducted daily patrols in the Serbian-dominated border region, hunting for illegal roads into Serbia of the kind used by the gunmen in their assault. [The roads were ‘illegal’ only in the view of the Albanians. Kosovo remained a Serbian province in the sovereign state of Serbia.]
“We know these roads better than anyone,” Commander Elshani told The Telegraph as the patrol wended its way through the mountains. “The Serbs can’t make a road we won’t find.”
At the last count, police identified 65 illegal roads, all of which have been blocked with large ditches cut through the concrete. A further 10 roads are kept under constant surveillance, mainly via drones.
Having a constant presence in the Serb-majority region sent a message to Belgrade that Kosovo was protecting its borders, Commander Elshani said. “Banjska changed the game, put the game into another level because of the deaths,” he said. “When the blood is shed, then it’s a problem.” [This was but a further small shedding of blood of a kind that had been going on since the early 1980s when the Kosovo Albanians started in earnest to try to colonise Kosovo as part of a Greater Albania].
Analysts warn that Kremlin propaganda is fuelling unrest in the north in a nation where 93 per cent are Albanian and 4 per cent are Serb. The majority of Serbs in Kosovo still regard Belgrade, which has never recognised Kosovo’s independence, as their government. [Since the early 1980s many thousands of Serbs have been driven out of Kosovo by Albanian violence and intimidation. But several hundred thousand still remain. The very rapid transition of Albanians from a minority to a substantial majority was always inflated by propaganda of this sort. The real increase was a birth rate that was four times higher than in any other part of Europe, a border that was seldom controlled under Tito, and the appalling regime of Hoxha in Albania which drove many desperate Albanians to flee to Kosovo. ‘Kremlin propaganda’ is used here simply as an incitement to western prejudice.]
After the siege, authorities uncovered a huge arms cache the attackers had stashed in disused buildings around the northern villages. Only a few weeks ago they discovered five more rocket launchers, a sign of the scale of the planned attack. [There is no indication that any effort has been made to confirm these allegations. They are reported without qualification as thought they were established fact in the same way that western media reported the entirely false claims during the Kosovo war that Serbia had ethnically cleansed hundreds of thousands of Albanians from Kosovo, that (according to the US press) 500,000 Albanian men were missing and believed murdered and that hundreds of thousands of Albanians had been slaughtered. The final UN report concluded that some 4,000 people had died in the Kosovo war, split almost evenly between the two sides, and that at least half of this total had been the direct consequence of Nato bombing.]
Military bases in Serbia
The 48 Serbian bases Kosovo claims Serbia has built near its border ahead of possible invasion. [Albania’s territorial ambitions in the region have always been well known. Any sovereign state would be wary of of a possible invasion from a neighbour with such ambitions and would ensure it had means to defend itself.]
Distraction from war in Ukraine
Based on President Vucic’s own words, Mr Kurti believes the Serbian president is biding his time for an opportunity to invade. Mr Vucic’s friendship with Vladimir Putin is well known, and Mr Kurti believes it is in the Russian leader’s interest for Serbia to invade Kosovo, as it would distract from his war in Ukraine. [Mr Kurti has a vivid imagination. Far from distracting from the war in Ukraine, a new war in Kosovo instigated by the Russians would only intensify the spotlight on Ukraine.]
Back down the mountain, at the Mitrovica Bridge that straddles the River Ibar, Serbia’s red, white and blue flag flutters everywhere. Once this bridge was a “hot spot” – an informal division between Kosovo’s northern border region and the ethnic Albanian south. Things appear peaceful as pedestrians walk freely between the two sides.
But there is an undercurrent of tension. Some ethnic-Serbian residents from the north view anyone who crosses into the south as a traitor, betraying the unhealed wounds from the bloodshed of the 1990s.
Cars are still not permitted to drive over the bridge, prevented by a blockade and the 24/7 presence of two police Land Rovers, one parked facing south and the other north.
Police said these precautions were essential to maintain stability in the area. [It is hardly surprising that – 25 years after an illegal western intervention which has made matters far worse, not better – Kosovo remains a very troubled region. This is entirely the fault of the international community which has broken every rule and shown bad faith at all times.]
Rumours swirl that Putin has recruited Serbians to fight in his army against Ukraine and as The Telegraph travelled around the north, the solidarity with Russia was omnipresent. The letter “Z” had been graffitied on to the sides of shops, cafes and local homes. [Rumours swirl about all kinds of things. Few prove to be true.]
Mr Kurti said: “This is the pool from where they [Russia] will recruit future Wagner wannabe paramilitaries for Ukraine and the Balkans.”
On one road sign, someone had stencilled the words “F— You Nato”, a warning to the bloc’s KFOR-peacekeeping presence, which has been stationed in Kosovo since 1999. Like the police, they conduct patrols, keeping an eye on what they refer to as the administrative border line, a 237-mile stretch of land dividing Kosovo and Serbia. [KFOR has been an unmitigated disaster, leaving Kosovo’s Serbs totally unprotected for 25 years.]
First Lieutenant Caldwell of Georgia’s National Guard, which makes up America’s contribution to KFOR, said their task was to detect anyone intending to pursue hostile activity. He stressed the importance of “cutting up” illegal roads to stop smugglers crossing into Kosovo. He said more were being built whenever possible. [A great mistake for the USA and its allies to cosy up to a regime led by the KLA, the hardest and most ruthless organised crime operation ever seen in Europe. These were the people who, from the 1990s onwards, initiated Europe’s tidal wave of hard drugs, people smuggling and human organ trafficking.]
For Commander Elshani, his men are in training for an attack. “It’s not a surprise Vucic wants to invade,” he said. “They can shoot us but they can’t scare us.”