This is the situation in South-Eastern Europe which the West had neglected for a long time, tolerating Serbia to weave illusions about the possibilities to restore the position it once had within the former Yugoslavia, becoming in one way or another a guardian of the Balkans’ once again, in this region.
Trotsky’s sentence applies today above all to the leaders of the EU and their policy towards Serbia and Russia for a long time. We are now facing a danger that will challenge the EU, but first Serbia itself.
The beginning of the war, as well as its end depends on the assumed costs for its initiation and continuation, on the assessment of the balance of power, the reliability of its victory… Its beginning is also affected by the ideas about its end, respectively by the ideas on the opposing party and its motives and powers for opposing the aggressor.
But, as long as the illusions about the return of Serbia to Kosovo continue to be nourished by the Serbian leadership, for as long the illusions about its results are also nourished. Therefore, the Serbian propaganda today about the return of the army to Kosovo is public, since this is the beginning of the justification of the war, the opposite would be treason.
An intermediate step could be to find an alibi for the invasion of NATO and the transfer of the power of the fascist Vucic to the hands of a temporary international administration, a type of provisional international guardianship.
Brussels had invested a long time in the comprehensive strategy of the countries of Southeast Europe in the EU. Meanwhile, with the integration of Central and Eastern Europe into NATO, including in this framework also Romania and Bulgaria, it was considered that a “democratic encirclement” of Serbia was being carried out, which would make it impossible for Russia to engage to the extent that it would endanger security in the region. Others judged that, especially with the arrival at the helm of the White House of President Joe Biden, thanks to his experience and knowledge also in relation to Russia and Serbia, we could have a more accelerated positive change, paving the way for narrowing of the perimeter of the “democratic encirclement” of Serbia, even with the acceptance of Kosovo in accelerated procedures in NATO, as was being done with Finland and Sweden.
Now, instead of having prosperity in this plan, the opposite happens. Russia, through Serbia, penetrates deeper into Montenegro, transforming it de facto into a Serbian Republic of the Adriatic, meanwhile it also warns of a military return to Kosovo and quite openly talks about the expected “Anschluss” of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia.
On November 24, 2023, the Minister of Defense of Bosnia-Herzegovina and its Deputy Prime Minister, Zukan Helez, announced that Russia has set up military camps in the territory of the “Serbska Republika”, where local (Serbian) and Russian special forces are trained. After the warning of the Ukrainian president, this statement of the Bosnian minister seemed to verify the thesis that Serbia has already become not only Russia’s vassal, but its real........