Crisis in Kosovo: Buying Aleksandar Vučić's time

In the days when decisions need to be made, Aleksandar Vučić made a new maneuver to buy himself some more time. He encouraged the representatives of the Serbs in Kosovo's institutions to leave them today in a demonstration, in order to convince Aljbin Kurti to change his decision on re-registration of vehicles from KS to RKS plates, and all this two days after the Government of Serbia signed new agreements for Kurti in Berlin .

And if he does not persuade Kurti, and thus "break" his policy, he probably expects that the "Western partners" will influence the Government in Pristina and thus further weaken the position of the Kosovo Prime Minister.

Unfortunately, nothing indicates that such an outcome will occur, on the contrary. Today, Vučić met with everyone, and spoke with the US ambassador on the phone. He had meetings with the Chinese and Russian ambassadors, he did not meet with Hill, nor with the Quinte ambassadors. Yesterday he talked for hours with the representative of the EU, who is continuing the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina, Miroslav Lajček, so I guess he estimated that he had devoted enough of his time to them, the Europeans, and the Americans.

Vučić previously talked about the fact that, if necessary, he will resign himself, thereby causing a political crisis in Serbia and thus "buying" more months in which the future status of Kosovo will not be decided, as if there is anything to be decided. .

Of course, before making such a move, he made sure to cause such a crisis in Kosovo first, because now the ball is in Kurti's court: the institutions will be blocked because the Serbs have resigned from the courts, from the police, from the public administration, they have taken the path of Kosovo's Albanians at the time of Milošević, in the late nineties - let's believe that Goran Rakić, the spokesman of the Serbian List, is a Serbian Ibrahim Rugova.

The territory of statelessness

Kurti now needs to see how he will manage that part of the territory, which is now in some way an area of ​​statelessness, and that is why the announcements that police forces from Pristina will be sent to the north are not surprising. KFOR forces are there, read NATO, and it can be assumed that conflicts on the ground will be avoided thanks to their presence and readiness to react.

What will not be avoided is trying to get things back "to the way they were" now, and that will take time. If last summer a crisis was caused to accelerate the dialogue, now Belgrade caused a crisis to slow down the process, believing in the policy "that every new day without a decision is good for Serbia" (one of Vučić's earlier statements).

Belgrade will gain some time with this move (so that Vučić would not have to resign), but, as the history of the past 30 years teaches us, this does not mean that the outcome will be more favorable for Serbia. What's more: if there were shouts and screams against Ahtisaari's plan 15 years ago, a hand would be given for him today.

Speeding up process resolution

But, when the chances are not taken, each subsequent event and offer is worse and less favorable. Perhaps Vučić believes that next week a fundamental change will take place in America, that Trump will return and that Grenell, who has meanwhile become Vučić's lobbyist, will come up with a slightly different "deal" for Serbia. He plays on that change, waits and moves everything as much as he can, believing that the USA will give up Kosovo and turn to Serbia.

Nothing tells us after ten years of his rule that this could really happen and that is why today's event will be remembered not as a gain in time, but as the beginning of speeding up the solution that can hardly go to the Serbian mill.

Turning to China as proxies, mocking the signed agreements two days after signatures in Berlin as part of the Berlin process, playing with the Kosovo Serbs... maybe it will ensure Vučić's rating for a while longer, but it will strengthen the determination of the other side to move towards ending the whole process. No one will have the time or will to deal with us and our regional crises, and this will become more and more obvious in the days ahead.

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