Lhe Serbian army was on heightened alert on Monday evening after recent tensions in neighboring Kosovo where shootings and explosions took place and roadblocks were erected.
“The President of Serbia (…) ordered the Serbian army to be at the highest level of combat readiness, that is, at the level of the use of armed force,” said Serbian Defense Minister Milos Vucevic in a statement. General Milan Mojsilovic, head of the Serbian armies, announced that he had been dispatched by the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic to the border with Kosovo.
“The situation there is complicated,” the chief of staff told Pink television on Sunday evening, en route to Raska, ten kilometers from the border with Kosovo. He added that it required “the presence of the Serbian army along the administrative line”, a term used by the Serbian authorities to designate the border with Kosovo.
And the Serbian Interior Ministry has indicated that “all units” will “immediately come under the command of the Chief of the General Staff”.
Finally, the Minister of Defense specified that the Head of State ordered to reinforce the Serbian military presence from 1,500 soldiers currently to 5,000. Serbia does not recognize the independence of its former southern province, populated overwhelmingly by Albanians, which it proclaimed in 2008.
Challenge the authorities
She encourages the 120,000 Serbs in Kosovo to challenge the local authorities, at a time when Pristina wants to establish its sovereignty over the whole territory.
Several hundred Kosovo Serbs have erected roadblocks in northern Kosovo since December 10 to protest against the arrest of a former Serbian policeman, paralyzing traffic to two border crossings with Serbia.
Shortly before General Mojsilovic’s departure for the border area, several Serbian media posted a video on social networks, in which gunshots can be heard, claiming that these were “fights” that took place in the early evening when Kosovar forces tried to dismantle a barricade.
This information was immediately denied by the Kosovo police who said on their Facebook page that their members had not participated in any exchange of fire. The media in Pristina, on the other hand, claimed that a patrol of the NATO Peacekeeping Force in Kosovo (Kfor) was in the firing zone.
Kosovar Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla claimed that the Kfor patrol had been attacked. For its part, Kfor announced that it was carrying out an investigation into shootings “on December 25, near a patrol of the NATO mission in Kosovo”.
“There were no injuries or material damage,” Kfor said in a statement.
At the beginning of November, hundreds of Serb police officers integrated into the Kosovo police, as well as judges, prosecutors and other civil servants left their posts en masse, in protest against a decision, and now suspended by the Pristina government, to ban Serbs who live in Kosovo to use license plates issued by Serbia.
