Last week, the Republic of Kosovo experienced a series of attacks: first, hand grenades exploded near a Kosovo police station in the city of Zvecan, in the predominantly Serb-inhabited north. A few days later, a hand grenade exploded in Zvecan’s city hall. Shortly after that, an explosion damaged a critical water channel near the city of Mitrovica, essential for supplying water to northern Kosovo’s residents and for cooling a power plant.
It remains unclear who is behind these attacks. The governments of Serbia and Kosovo accuse each other of responsibility. However, the European Union (EU) condemned the attack on the water channel as a “terrorist act”: “This is a despicable act of sabotage against Kosovo’s critical civilian infrastructure,” said the outgoing EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell.
Regardless of the investigations’ outcome, a pattern of violent actions and threats from Serbia against Kosovo has been evident since 2022. In September of last year, a paramilitary group from Serbia, armed with weapons from the Serbian Armed Forces, infiltrated and attacked Kosovo police officers. Four people were killed in what the EU condemned as a “terrorist act.” Brussels threatened sanctions but stopped short of implementing them. Later, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic moved his armed forces closer to Kosovo. Only interventions by the United States (U.S.) and NATO forced Vucic to halt his tanks. A similar scenario occurred in December 2022.
“The Serbian World”
During EU-mediated negotiations in March 2023, Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti verbally agreed to improve relations. On the same evening, Vucic stated in an interview, when asked when the agreement would be signed: “I have unbearable pain in my right hand; I can only sign with my right hand, and it is expected that this pain will last for the next four years.”
In May 2023, Serbian attacks on NATO peacekeeping forces Kosovo Force (KFOR) followed, injuring 90 soldiers, some seriously. After KFOR’s numbers were increased to nearly 5.000 troops late last year, violence in Kosovo subsided.
In June 2024, an intergovernmental conference was held in Belgrade under Vucic’s leadership to implement the concept of the “Serbian World.” The name is derived from the term “Russian World” (Russkiy Mir); the Serbian World is an adapted new version of the “Greater Serbia” project, which Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic pursued during the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, aiming to unite all Serb-inhabited territories.
Praise from the EU president
In April 2024, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. General Christopher Cavoli, urgently warned of new armed conflicts in the Western Balkans. Russia, he said, is using Serbian actors to incite tensions in the region and is trying to pit different ethnic groups against each other. “The attacks on Kosovo police officers and the buildup of Serbian troops on the border with northern Kosovo represented the greatest threat of interstate violence since the end of the 1999 war and demonstrated a concerning level of threat in the region,” Cavoli said.
These events were not discussed during the visit of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Vucic in Belgrade in October 2024. Vucic and his government were explicitly praised and rewarded: Von der Leyen affirmed that Vucic had done “an excellent job” with “an outstanding reform program” and announced financial aid to Serbia worth hundreds of millions of euros. “Dear Aleksandar,” von der Leyen said, “you have shown determination in pushing reforms, particularly regarding the rule of law and democracy. You have shown that your words are followed by action!”
A hybrid regime
The EU president’s praise stands in stark contrast to numerous analyses by reputable institutes and NGOs. According to the World Justice Project, Serbia ranks 94th in the rule of law, between Benin and China. All other countries formed after Yugoslavia’s dissolution are in a better position, with Kosovo, for example, at 58th place. Transparency International places Serbia at 104th out of 180 countries in its corruption index. Human Rights Watch paints a grim picture of media freedom, and election observers criticized the December 2023 elections as neither free nor fair. Freedom House has long labeled Serbia’s regime as a “hybrid,” meaning it lies between democracy and autocracy.
The Serbian government is currently taking repressive measures against civil society following protests against planned lithium mining and the demolition of a railway station canopy in Novi Sad, which resulted in the deaths of 14 people. Simultaneously, Vucic’s regime, increasingly nervous domestically, is dramatically intensifying contacts with the governments of Russia, China, Belarus, and Iran at military, security-political, and economic levels. The absence of criticism from the EU, coupled with unconditional financial aid, appears to be achieving the opposite of the desired goal, which is calming the Western Balkans.
The rule of law replaced by lithium
“As you know, Serbia is not only a strategic partner but also an ally of Russia,” said Aleksandar Vulin, Vucic’s close confidant and deputy prime minister, to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting in Vladivostok in September. The U.S. imposed sanctions on Vulin due to his ties to Moscow.
In an interview on the sidelines of the BRICS summit, Vulin also criticized EU and NATO representatives, who repeatedly urged the Serbian government to support EU sanctions against Moscow. However, Vulin promised his Russian audience that Serbia would never commit such a “great betrayal”: “I am proud of my relations with Russia and will fight to make them even closer until the last day of my life.”
Since Chancellor Olaf Scholz launched a billion-euro lithium agreement between Brussels and Belgrade in July, tensions in the Western Balkans have only simmered further. A former German diplomat and Balkan expert, who wishes to remain anonymous, stated that the EU now views the Balkans only as a “region that supplies caregivers” and “a source of resources like lithium.” “Autocrats like Vucic” are helpful in this regard, as they are best suited to push through domestically controversial projects such as the lithium deal.
Balkan expert Professor Florian Bieber of the University of Graz commented on his X account: “Today, the EU and Germany have replaced democracy, the rule of law, and the prospect of Balkan accession to the EU with lithium. Serbia lacks independent institutions, media, or space for a critical civil society.”
As announced, Vucic is scheduled to meet Chancellor Olaf Scholz next Tuesday in Freiberg, Saxony. The topic of discussion is the “sustainable exploitation of lithium.”, Radio Sarajevo writes.
