West has no ‘backbone’ in Kosovo-Serbia dispute, says British MP

A worrying stand-off between Kosovo and Serbia is partly to blame on the west being wary of aggravating Belgrade amid Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, said a leading British MP.

Alicia Kearns, the chair of the foreign affairs select committee in the House of Commons, told the Financial Times in a phone interview that the UK, the US, Germany, France and Italy should lift sanctions on Kosovo and move away from a “Belgrade centred approach”.

“The west is showing in the Balkans a failure to have a backbone, and we’re also showing we haven’t learned the lessons in deterring Russia,” she said. “We had an entire priority of how not to upset or aggravate Russia at the cost of those around it. The exact same thing is happening here.”

In March, Belgrade and Pristina agreed in principle to resolve their differences but hostilities flared up again, culminating in September, when an armed stand-off between Serb militants and police at a monastery in northern Kosovo left four people dead.

The monastery siege put the brakes on efforts to normalise relations, an ongoing process since 2008, when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia and was recognised by most western powers — a move that Belgrade has maintained that it will never accept.

Kearns warned Westminster in July that Serb militants were smuggling weapons into Kosovo, risking a flare-up of violence. That earned her sharp rebukes from Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić as well as Nato, which said there was no evidence for such activity.

But after the deadly siege in September, Kosovo police confiscated millions of dollars worth of heavy arms and ammunition, including grenade launchers, anti-personnel mines, machine guns and armoured vehicles.

“Bear in mind what I said back in June,” said Kearns. “Weapons were coming in from Serbia in ambulances, into Kosovo and being stored in churches. And what have we seen? Weaponry that has clearly come across from Serbia . . . Two of the terrorists who died on the day in the shooting were ambulance drivers. And where did they hide? In a monastery.”

Kearns, who visited the site where Kosovo authorities stored the confiscated weapons, said it was clear that the military-grade weaponry had been part of army caches.

“Serial numbers line up,” she said. “This isn’t like random bits of equipment that random low-level guys pulled together and decided to use. These are new pieces of equipment from 2021. That was the most recent piece of equipment that I saw.”

Serbia has consistently denied that it had supplied the attackers with weapons and issued criminal charges against Milan Radojcic, the mastermind of the attack. But after initially arresting Radojcic, Serbian authorities let him go on condition that he did not leave the country.

A former politician of Serb ethnicity with close ties to the Vučić administration, Radojcic was placed under sanctions by the US in 2021 for being part of a Kosovo organised crime group accused of carrying out political assassinations.

Vučić said Belgrade was conducting an investigation against Kearns, whom he accused of acting on behalf of foreign interests, and added he would order a freeze on further arms exports from Serbia.

“For a president to threaten a MP is a reflection of Vučić’s insecurities and that my comments had hit home,” she said. “Be careful what web you seek to weave, when you set out to deceive.”

She warned that despite EU and western mediators urging a return to the negotiating table, the situation remained tense.

“There is no sign of the organised crime gangs operating within Kosovo to have stopped. There is no sign on the Serb side . . . that it reduced its desires in Kosovo,” she said. “The international system was complicit in pretending there were no organised crime groups around Kosovo.”

She said the west should use more of the evidence it had and crack down on weapons smuggling networks.

“The international community have had this evidence — and has a choice to release some,” she said. “The problem is the appeasement of Belgrade.”

Pressure needed to be maintained on Belgrade, said Kearns.

“We can’t accept the premise that Serbia will never recognise Kosovo,” she said. “Kosovo can’t abandon aspirations for full [western] integration.”