1. Warnings and Accusations Brought to Serbia as a Result of the Events that Took Place in Northern KOSOVO

As a result of the armed conflict that took place on September 24 between a group of armed Serbs and the Kosovo police forces, near the village of Banjska, officials from Kosovo and Serbia began to provide very interesting warnings and different points of view to the international community.

It should not be overlooked that on September 29, the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg informed the international public opinion in a written statement that "NATO allies met and expressed their deep concern about the tensions in northern Kosovo ".

After the tensions that arose as a result of the said conflict, the Kosovo government denounced Serbia, and accused the Serbian military forces of approaching its border. Thus, in a statement issued on September 30, the Kosovo government declared that it was "following closely and with great vigilance the latest developments regarding the movement of military Serbian units towards the border". Moreover, the statement said that "the movements of the Serbian army took place in three different directions", detailing the movements of certain Serbian brigades towards different points of the Serbian-Kosovo border. According to the Kosovo government, the Serbian military movements include "the placement of anti-aircraft and heavy artillery" in several places located several kilometres from the border between the two entities, emphasizing that: "We have repeatedly expressed our concern about the existence of these 48 of military and gendarmerie bases, pointing out that these bases serve to support a possible military aggression against Kosovo, which has now been confirmed".

In the same context, on October 1^st, the Kosovo authorities stated that they had evidence that Serbia was trying to annex the northern region and that the armed Serbian attackers involved in the events of September 24 had been preparing for this for a long time.

In this sense, the statement of the Kosovar Minister of the Interior, Xhelal Svecla, is eloquent, who emphasized during a press conference in one of the headquarters of the Kosovar police in the north of the city of Mitrovica that "This terrorist organization had only one goal: the annexation of the north of the Republic of Kosovo. To achieve this objective, Serbian institutions organized their military, logistics and financial capabilities".

According to X. Svecla, the Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, thed Defense Minister Miloš Vučević and the Chief of Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces, Milan Mojsilović were directly involved in the said attempt, with the Kosovar official stressing that: "The Serbian President tried to deny the fact that the state he leads was involved in the planning and execution of the September 24 attack. The documents we published earlier and the footage we will publish are clear evidence of the involvement of the military and state structures in this organization ".

Considering that the Kosovo government pointed out that the “Serbian present a serious threat”, Kosovo authorities stated that they were in contact with the US and the European Union Member States, emphasizing that "the Kosovo institutions, in coordination with international partners, are more determined than ever to defend at all costs its entire territory, to protect the sovereignty, constitutional order, public order and the lives of the citizens and residents of their country".

For his part as expected, the Serbian President A. Vučić, denied that Serbia was involved in a military build-up along the border with Kosovo, with the Serbian leader pointing out in a video posted on October 1^st, on Instagram saying "A campaign of lies... has been launched against our Serbia." They lied a lot about the presence of our military forces... In fact, they are concerned with the fact that Serbia has what they describe sophisticated weapons."

As a result of the developments in the region, the Kosovar government is asking the Serbian president, A. Vučić, to immediately withdraw his troops from the border. Thus, it is worth mentioning that on September 30, the Serbian leader stated in a media interview that Serbia will not send troops to Kosovo.

Moreover, A. Vučić also said that he would order a military withdrawal, as an escalation would be "counterproductive" to Serbia's EU membership aspirations, and on October 1^st, the Serbian president added that: "We will continue to invest in the defence our country, but Serbia wants peace. Everything they said they made up and lied and they knew they were making it up and lying."

Comments:

Belgrade does not recognize Kosovo's independence and, so far, insists on the creation of an association of Serbian municipalities in northern Kosovo, theoretically as a condition for normalizing relations with Pristina, but practically as increasing the autonomy of northern Kosovo, where ethnic Serbs are the majority. It is worth noting that, in 2021, very interesting and frequently discussed topics appeared again regarding the future of the entities in the Western Balkans and their possible territorial reconfiguration. This is a topic that has also been intensively circulated before, but which has raised concerns regarding Kosovo’s future and, more than that, regarding the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) as well.

On September 24, as it is well known, an armed clash broke out in the village of Banjska in northern Kosovo, near the border with Serbia, when a group of armed Serbs blocked a bridge with two trucks.

A large number of security forces were sent to the region and the Brnjak border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia was closed. The area has been the scene of several disturbances since April 2023, when local ethnic Serbs boycotted elections in northern Kosovo, and were followed by protests against the election of mayors from among the ethnic Kosovar Albanians, who are a minority in northern Kosovo.

Albanians are by far the largest ethnic group in all of Kosovo, followed by Serbs, about half of whom live in the north of the entity. Amid election unrest, NATO peacekeeping troops were deployed. It should not be overlooked that, according to the US National Security Council, there has been a "large Serbian military deployment along the border with Kosovo". Its spokesman called the said military deployment "a very destabilizing development".

John Kirby, the spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said on September 28 that US officials were monitoring a large deployment of Serbian troops along the border with Kosovo, describing it as a "staging without precedent in the advanced positions of Serbian artillery, tanks and mechanized infantry units".

It is very well known that A. Vučić has raised the combat readiness level of the Serbian troops on the border with Kosovo several times in recent months. Serbia has also strengthened its troops by supplying them with weapons and other equipment, purchased mainly from Russia and China.

2. Can a Republic of Srpska Secession Become a High Probability?

On September 29, hundreds of Bosnian Serbs waved Serbian and Russian flags and banners featuring the Russian President Vladimir Putin as they staged a protest in support of their separatist leader, Milorad Dodik, who is threatening and seeking to achieve the union with neighbouring Serbia.

The protests took place at BiH's unmarked internal border, which separates the country into two entities – the R. Srpska and the Croatian-Muslim Federation (FBiH) as called for and specified in the US-brokered Dayton Peace Accords that ended the 1992-1995 war. Serbian protesters chanted slogans against the perception that BiH was a single state.

They briefly blocked traffic between the two entities, but no major incidents were reported.

"We have always been on the winning side", said Ljubiša Ćosić[1], a Bosnian Serb official. "I have always been wanted freedom. So our association with the Russian Federation and the Russian people is extra-principal."

Comments:

The Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik, who has long had close ties to V. Putin, is openly seeking to separate the Bosnian Serb territories from the rest of BiH and join them with neighbouring Serbia. Because of this, he was sanctioned by the US in 2017.

There are widespread fears that Serbia, a Russian ally, could inflame tensions in the Western Balkans to divert at least some of the world's attention from the war in Ukraine.

Bosnian prosecutors are in the process of filing charges against M. Dodik for his separatist actions and defying the decisions of an international official overseeing peace in BiH.

He could face up to five years in prison if convicted by a Bosnian court.

[1] Ljubiša Ćosić is a Bosnian Serb politician with a master's degree in economics and a PhD student at the University of Banja Luka. L. Ćosić worked as an interpreter for the OSCE and as an intern at the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH and the National Democratic Institute in Washington, DC. He then worked for the Regional Development Agency in Sarajevo (2004-2006) and the BiH State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA, 2006-2008). He was an adviser to the Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of BiH, Mladen Zirojević (SNSD, 2008-2011) and an adviser on economic issues to the Serbian member of the tripartite presidency of BiH, Nebojša Radmanović (SNSD, 2011-2012). Since March 2017, he is the president of the Association of Municipalities and Towns in R. Srpska. In October 2020, in the first direct election for the post, he was elected mayor of the city of East Sarajevo, covering six suburban municipalities in the R. Srpska entity.