Serbia
 

Doubtless Russian fomented to distract from the war in Ukraine. One hope the new Chinese SAW will be appropriately targeted…

Check this thread out vis-a'-vis on the military tension spike at the Serbian-Kosovo border.

The Serb President says Kosovo is about to attack, has moved Serb troops to the border & blockaded cross-border vehicle traffic.

Border 'Firefights' are reported….

Didn't we put this to bed in the 90's?

Been going for over a 1000 years - a bit naive to think one minor intervention would kill it off…

reported gunfire, Air raid sirens in north kosovo verified.

https://ukranews.com/en/news/872888-...-on-full-alert

with all those air defence systems delivered from the Chinese this April is this a part of the putin puzzle play. Serb wildcard to pull out to distract from ukraine at an appropriate (possibly important) time. and give the chinese a sandbox to test there stuff in the field.
It Could be quite a headache. possibly

Tensions are very high currently between Serbia and Kosovo, with reports of barricades going up in Serb areas of the province and clashes. It’s an evolving situation tonight but it’s possible that Serbia has upped the ante as part of a geopolitical move coordinated with Russia.

NATO has described the situation as tense, notes it is ready to intervene *if* stability is jeopardised and restates its commitment to political process between Kosovo and Serbia…


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....852ad0352.jpeg

A remarkably naive view of how difficult it would be to persuade anyone to launch aircraft into any conflict where the Serbs have latest generation SAW - let alone commit to offensive operations…

I am not even checking what is happening between Serbia and Kosovo.

Because there are 2 foreign military commands in Kosovo: an American and an Italian, which have an US Air Force F-16C Block 40 wing at Aviano and an Italian Air Force Eurofighter wing at Gioia del Colle and an F-35A wing at Amendola, plus an Italian Army paratroopers brigade at Pisa & a US Army airborne brigade at Aviano as backup.

If the Serbians do something stupid it will take 2 hours for the first of 100+ fighter-bombers to appear above the Serbian troops... & kill them all.

The letter "Z" used by #Russian Army invading #Ukraine has been observed on the helmets of Serbian forces on the border with #Kosovo as both countries mass military equipment to their borders.


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....7b12dfd28.jpeg

I hope its just a Very local administration issue, the change date is the 1st august. https://www.rferl.org/a/kosovo-serbi.../31967812.html

Hard to imagine how only a generation later some are so eager to relive horrors of there relatives in the 90s. But perhaps the serbs are as indoctrinated as a good proportion of the russians are.

Lets just hope its a licensing issue.

Suspect the mutual confidence there is zero, so any change in the status quo will be seen as a way to inflict harm by one of the parties.
In Jerusalem for example, the management of the various Christian holy places is super regulated by the various denominations that control them individually.
No change is possible without massive effort to ensure agreement by all parties.
Same here, no administrative issue is ever local in this situation, but rather will be seen as part of a salami slice tactic.

Russia would benefit from the distraction of Serbia and Kosovo tensions. Didn't end well last time. The damage from 1999's bombing was still evident in 2014. ''Such a development of events is more evidence of the failure of the mediation mission of the European Union. This is also an example of what place Serbia has been prepared for in the European Union by offering Belgrade to de facto put up with the lack of rights of its compatriots,''
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry.

And yet she is a mouthpiece for her govt's genocide in Ukraine, and doesn't gag on the use of the term "provocation" by the Russian FM.

SAW ? I only know this as Squad Automatic Weapon, presumably not meant here .

SAW = Surface to Air Weapons.

A generic term covering SAM, AA guns, laser and anything else such as EMP you might think of.

https://www.abbreviationfinder.org/a...ir-weapon.html

Latest Serbian system.

https://en.missilery.info/missile/hq-22

This won't end well.

https://rs.n1info.com/english/news/s...on-of-balkans/

Serbian ruling party MP: Serbia might have to begin denazification of Balkans

As clumsy as Milosevic was as a leader, it would appear that the new generation are no improvement if that MP's remarks are any indication.
Has anyone sent a Memo to the Bulgarians, explaining that they are now Nazis?
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....4ba95da18a.png
The Balkans _ what is it anyway?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ropa_03_01.png

Did no one tell the MP that bigger portion of the Balkan peninsula is NATO territory. Rather bold statement of said MP. Unless he meant to denazify himself.

Paddy Ashdown said in the late 1990s that he felt peace in the Balkans would last for about 20 years, which was just long enough for a new generation that had never experienced the war to come into adulthood, and for the generation that did experience it to forget the horror. Incidentally, he noted, pre-Tito the ethnic conflicts would typically flare up every 20 years or so.

Six Y 20 aircraft delivered some missiles in April. Will that be enough for a prolonged conflict or just enough fireworks for a large display ?

I spent six months of my life in Sarajevo in 1997/8 as the UK military representative at the OHR - (Office of the High Representative) a UN position.

Kosovo was going on while I was there.

I was not at all impressed by the peace dividend that had allegedly been brokered, and spent most of my time trying to keep Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks at peace and talking to each other. I never thought that I was successful in my endeavours. They did not seem keen to get on with each other.

So I am not at all surprised that Serbia is possibly acting as a surrogate to Putin's current Ukraine adventure. Putin might enjoy a distraction west from what he seems to be up to in Ukraine, and Serbia would probably enjoy their efforts at regional domination as well.

The world is not as peaceful as it was during the Cold War.

Just my opinion.

Does anyone have an answer?

Simply flying through that area regularly, many radar units are unwilling even to give you the call sign of their neighbours. It’s a rare Belgrade controller who will tell you to contact Sarajevo or KFOR, similarly a rare Zagreb controller who will tell you to contact Belgrade…

Understatement of the week. ;) The Dayton agreement was only achieved by quite a bit of arm twisting. (Red an article recently about those weeks in Ohio, I'll see if I can find a link). The three parties went into it feeling that they had done so "Against our wills, Papa, against our wills!"
No surprise.

Spent many dets in Kosovo 99/2000. Always knew this was not finished. Speak to any Serb. They waited a long time to kick the Ottomans out. They then get their country handed to the Albanians, courtesy of NATO.
Do not believe the western narrative that think the Albanians were all sweet and light and the Serbs were evil. There were atrocities on both sides, but we were fed the party line.
Do not fall for the narrative.

Agree entirely with you, but the party line is really pervasive. It is almost as if there was a monopoly on the news.
It is sobering when one has to read Xinhua or the World Socialist Web site to get a more balanced view of events.

you must be Serbian. “Serbs get their country handed to the albanians” says it all. Were the Albanians also responsible for the massacres of Bosnians and Croats?

The Albanians are autochthonous to the region. Serbs are not. The Albanian population in Kosovo is around 95%. But you say its Serbian Land? Go spew your propaganda somewhere else.

Of course you do etudiant, bad takes are your thing. It's utter tosh that the Serbs were the victims, just as it's utter tosh that the Russians are the victims in Ukraine today. The Serbs were the aggressors throughout the Yugoslav wars, of which Kosovo was the culmination. After a decade of genocide and massacres, the West finally had had enough and the Serbs finally got to reap what they had sown.

As part of the follow on from Russian expansionism in 19th century Crimea and their push toward a warm water port on the Black Sea and eventually the Mediterranean,the Serbs were, shall we say 'encouraged' by some nationalist Russians to believe that they belonged, heart and soul, to an Orthodox 'Greater Serbia' (and not to the Islamic Ottomans) . Some were supplied with training, weapons and explosives by disaffected Russians. They felt betrayed when the Czar abandoned them to the Austro-Hungarian Empire whilst their neighbours became aligned with Russia and were again 'encouraged' to rebel against that pact (by internal Russian factions who didn't agree with the Czar).
The unintended consequence was the First World War along with the collapse of the regime in Russia.

I hope that this history is not repeating itself. Perhaps Serbian politicians could learn from history that Russian promises are worthless.

Bit of thread creep but I feel justified as I'm sure a lot of people maybe thinking the same.
Serbia, Ukraine, Chinese tanks now sabre rattling on Fujian beaches. The US in Taiwan.
Are we looking at an inevitable World Wide escalation here?
I'm asking hoping you will all say `no way` as it is a little scary.

There are reasons fo4 launching surprise attacks - a visit by a 82 year old leader of a lower chamber of government who will be out of office within a few months isn’t one of them…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_final_warning

“China’s final warning”

I had not heard that Speaker Pelosi was retiring.
Her position as the Speaker of the House (next in line of succession after the Vice President) makes her visit carry a certain amount of political messaging weight. I also doubt that she'll lose her bid for re election in November.
Nice link, thanks. But...
President Xi has been slowly consolidating power and using quite a bit of rhetoric that involves "the century/centuries of humiliation" so relying on the final warning being an empty threat seems to me a careless approach - given China's much increased capability in the last quarter of a century.
President Xi may be itching to establish a precedent that "China's Final Warning" can no longer be taken lightly.

She may not be retiring, but all the polls say the democrats won’t have the majority and she won’t be the speaker any more…

We'll see. You may be right. But, the polls also predicted that H. Clinton would beat D. Trump, yet that isn't what happened. ;) (See also the predictions of Dewey beating Truman ~ whoops, that one didn't pan out either!)

ohh, what we could read on these pages...:ugh::ugh::ugh:

But I will informaly investigate case...

It is simple impossible because it is written that you must tell: the name of unit , type of service AND frequency (e.g. Zagreb radar 120.7, Banja Luka radar 136.05, Belgrade radar 123.775 etc...-you can not shorten it..)

Interestingly, following a string of Italians commanding KFOR, it is now Hungarian-led. Given that Viktor Orban is not exactly one of Putins staunchest critics, might there be any significance in the timing of this latest trouble, and might there be scope for interference from Hungary in the KFOR response?

History not only repeats, it gets worse
 

A few years ago on holiday in Istanbul I went to the military museum. On display was what was claimed to be the original Ottoman flag flown at the battle of Kosovo in 1448 (but it looked like a replica to me) . This battle was between the Turks and Hungarians. The Ottomans won and went on to capture Serbia and the rest of the Balkans, before going on to take Constantinople in 1453.

After the successful Greek revolt against the Ottomans in the 1820s, the Greeks came up with the Megali Idea (Big Idea). They wanted to recapture Constantinople for Christianity.

It's not only not over, it's hardly started. And once more the Russians are involved.

Only odd numbered world wars start in the Balkans. Oh!

ahh :}

This thread becomes expert one.

Battle of Kosovo in 1448,
Hungarian vs Turks
:ouch::oh::8:}:E:ugh::{:zzz:

Ukraine’s 40-strong peacekeeping unit, part of the KFOR mission, is leaving Kosovo

The battle of Kosovo that I usually think of was in 1398. Now I have to look up that later one.

No expertise on the Balkans, but the internecine fighting in the region during WW2 was incredibly brutal, with atrocities the order of the day, Check out Chetniks or Ustashi for details.
The place is soaked in blood, has been since Byzantine days, when one of the more successful emperors got the honorific title of 'Bulgar Killer'..The Turks just added to the mayhem, centuries later.

The second battle is the one the Turks like to focus on because it was decisive (for a few centuries at least). It's anyone's guess as to when the next battle will be fought.

I claim no expertise here, I simply reported that I saw the flag. Judging from the number of images available this is a live issue still. Are the Kosovans (a) an oppressed minority (b) a threat to their neighbours, with support from Turkey (c) both (d) not worth learning about?

two crossed flags Kosovo and Turkey waving in wind at cloudy sky. Concept of relationship, dialog, travelling between two countries. 3d illustration Stock Photo - Alamy