The repeated burning of cars recently in the north Kosova, which was an act precisely orchestrated by Belgrade, is now signaling the obstruction of the agreement on the part of Serbia. Meanwhile the official Belgrade has stated that it is pointless to reach an agreement while the incidents in the north of Kosova continue. This clarifies that Vucic wants to bring back tensions in Kosova now.
Keeping tension in the north of Kosova allows Vucic to obstruct the agreement’s implementation while, on the other hand, allowing one to appear politically justifiable in front of his people. In fact, Vucic is not ready to terminate the Ohrid agreement completely, just as he is not ready to lose his influence among Serbian nationalists.
On the other hand, it appears that the international community will struggle to persuade the epicenter of Russian and Chinese influence in the Balkans to abandon the use of violence to advance its political agenda. Meanwhile, Aleksander Vucic, the president of Serbia, has publicly stated that he has made it clear to the high representatives of the EU that Serbia will not implement some parts of the agreement reached with Kosova on March 18 meeting in Ohrid.
Regarding the standpoint of Serbia, the EU spokesman Peter Stano, said that Serbia has a contractual obligation and must implement the points of the agreement if it wants progress in the EU membership process. Otherwise, there will be consequences for Belgrade. Nonetheless, the implementation of the agreement will be an incremental process that will have timetables as agreed upon but with years given to specific articles. Vucic will pick and choose what will he implement and what to postpone for later and with this potentially, save difficult subjects- articles to deal at the time when it is convenient for him in terms of elections.
While there are less than two weeks left from the date when the elections will be held in four ethnic-Serb-dominated north municipalities, it is likely that the scenarios from the past will be repeated. Information is circulating that criminal groups are being trained in Rashka, to promote destabilization of the situation on the eve of April 23. The possibility of repeated barricading in northern Kosova is not excluded, as in the previous elections, which were originally scheduled for December 18, 2022, but were moved to April 23 at the request of the international community due to the Serbs barricades of northern Kosova, for more than two weeks. Elections will be held as a result of the resignation of Lista Srpska-affiliated mayors in the Serbian municipalities, at the beginning of November 2022, due the Kosova Government’s decision to change all license plates from Serbian to Kosova plates.
However, Lista Srpska, the major party of Kosova Serbs, has once more decided to boycott the municipal elections. While the burning of Serbian citizens’ cars with RKS license plates still continues there. Moreover, lynching and other forms of persecution of Serbian residents who disobey the Serbian List have escalated. The Lista Srpska is a political instrument in the hands of Vucic and this time, he is sacrificing them like a chess pawn to protect larger moves in Serbia and vis-a-vis international community respectively EU.
The agreement which is verbally agreed and in the spirit of international law, legally binding, is imposed from top down in a trumpesque move framed “take it or leave it” and there is no bottom up approach to implementation of this agreement. Both sides hesitate to implement this because it will cost voters in both sides… while EU and US are mostly interested in the real problem in question and that is Serbia siding with Russia. As tweeted by Chris Hill, the most important issue is Serbia to move from a pro-russian ally to pro-european ally. It seems Kosova-Serbia deal is more of a collateral of international politics then primary target of conflict resolution.
