Russia on Tuesday called on the West to end “false propaganda” about the violence in Kosovo, which has left about 30 NATO soldiers injured, and demanded “decisive de-escalation measures”.
“We call on the West to end its false propaganda and stop blaming Serbs who have been driven to despair by the incidents in Kosovo,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“We need decisive de-escalation measures,” he added.
About 30 members of the NATO-led international force in Kosovo were injured on Monday in clashes with Serb protesters, a minority in Kosovo but the majority in the north of the country, who demonstrated outside the town hall in the town of Zvecan to call for the resignation. from the new chairman of the municipality, who belongs to the Albanian majority.
Serbs in North Kosovo do not recognize the authorities of the new mayors, elected in April in a vote with a turnout of just 3 percent, because of the boycott of the Serbian population, a minority in the country but a large proportion forms majority in four municipalities in northern Kosovo.
Serbs resigned en masse from local institutions in the region in November and Pristina decided to organize municipal elections in an attempt to close the institutional gap.
There were already incidents on Friday, when Kosovar-Albanian mayors took office together with the police.
Serb demonstrators gathered in front of the Zvecan municipality on Monday demanded the withdrawal of Albanian councilors, as well as Kosovo’s police forces.
Serbia has never recognized the independence declared by the former province in 2008, and tensions between Belgrade and Pristina regularly rise. About 120,000 Serbs live in Kosovo, about a third of whom live in the north of the territory.
The two countries are negotiating the normalization of their relations under a new EU plan, backed by Washington, in a process often punctuated by clashes.
Source: DN
