A mysterious attack in northern Kosovo rattles everyone

Serbia’s president, its intelligence services and its armed forces were all involved in a plot to seize control of the north of Kosovo last month. At least, so says Xhelal Svecla, Kosovo’s minister of the interior. A Serbian paramilitary group was discovered by a passing police patrol, three Serbs died in a shoot-out, a Kosovo Albanian policeman was killed by a remote-controlled mine, and a huge cache of weapons was left behind by the group as it fled. Mr Svecla says this was all part of a plan by the Serbian authorities to seize control of Kosovo’s north with a proxy force, in emulation of Russia’s grab of parts of Ukraine’s Donbas in 2014.

Serbia denies involvement and blames Kosovo for provoking local Serbs. However, it is true that in the past Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic, has said he would like a deal whereby Kosovo’s overwhelmingly Serb-inhabited north reverts to his country’s control (Kosovo was a province of Serbia until in 2008 it declared independence, which Serbia refuses to recognise). In 2018 Mr Vucic said that “All Serbs know they lost Kosovo, but I will try everything in my might to retrieve what I can, so in the end it is not a total defeat or total loss.”