“Challenges for the Western Balkans after the start of the war in Ukraine” was the topic of the regular session of the association “Circle 99” which was held today. The introductory speaker was professor, Nexhmedin Spahiu, Ph.D., from the Faculty of Political Science in Priština, Fena reports.
At the press conference ahead of the session, Spahiu said that, regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine, “we can still consider that Russia ‘broke its teeth’, that it failed to do what it wanted, to seize Ukraine in just a few days and create a greater Russia and fulfill greater Russia aspirations”.
According to Spahiu, this situation presents challenges for the Western Balkans as well.
He says that the war in Ukraine and Western pressures on Serbia are putting Serbia’s politics before great temptations, either to renounce its centuries-old policies or to clash with the West.
“If Serbia decides to oppose the West, war will break out again in the Western Balkans. There are two potential battlefields: Kosovo and/or Bosnia and Herzegovina. In my opinion, it will be Kosovo. Negotiations with Kosovo are ongoing and they will show us whether Serbia will give up its centuries-old policy and turn a new page, or whether it will enter into war conflicts, first with Kosovo, and at a later stage with NATO,” believes Spahiu.
He says that the Bosnian intellectual elite “need to think about how Bosnia will behave in both cases – in the event that Serbia bows down to the West and Western values, where the West will make some concessions to Serbia, and in the event that it decides to oppose it”.
“In both cases, it will be a tribulation for Bosnia. Of course, it will also be a tribulation for Kosovo,” concluded Spahiu.
