Belgrade 03/06/2023

PUBLIC STATEMENT

CONCERNING THE KOSOVO LITANIES IN BELGRADE

Forum for Security and Democracy (FBD/FSD), on the subject of the newest litanies for Kosovo that have been held in Belgrade, points out that they represent a direct, if inapt, attempt to pressure government authorities to renege on Serbia’s official foreign policy and subordinate its interests to the wartime necessities of the Kremlin and Putin’s aggression on Ukraine.

In FSD’s view the newest escalation in Moscow’s rhetoric towards Belgrade, regarding the alleged shipment of serbian weapons to Ukraine, point toward just such a conclusion.

It is our opinion that such a critique is directed as help and support to extreme right-wing parties that represent Moscow’s interests in Serbia and is also a means to incite more support for the litanies for Kosovo, in which the Russian factor in this country is putting in great hopes in an obvious attempt to promote them as the major “sales stand” for Russian foreign policy and Putin-Dugin ideology in Serbia.

FSD assesses that this turn of events after the acceptance of the French-German plan (which Forum for Security and Democracy was the first to officially endorse!) confirms our estimations of strong opposition to said plan by exponents of Russian interests in Serbia, which was never really motivated by the issue of Kosovo and was exclusively in the function of forestalling the alignment of Serbia’s foreign policy with the European Union – in which the acceptance and implementation of this plan is but the first step.

FSD, last but not least, concludes that along with the readiness to accept the EU/French-German plan for Kosovo Serbia must also be prepared to face the most malign phase and forms of Russian influence on Serbia’s political discourse.
FSD points out that – seeing as how Russia and it’s collaborators stationed in Serbia are left with scant few options and wriggle room to impede the continuation of Serbia’s Euro-Atlantic integrations – such influences will be increasingly more aggressive and won’t shrink from drastic actions with even more dramatic consequences unless the Serbian government opposes such efforts openly and efficiently.
FSD underscores that the so-called litanies for the preservation of holy Kosovo, demonstrate that issue of Kosovo – which has become and will be remembered as the single greatest political challenge of this generation – can only be concluded peacefully with the joining of the entirety of the Western Balkans to the family of European peoples and with the termination of Russia’s malign influence on political events in this part of Europe.