The European Stability Initiative (ESI) says that no international organization, including security organizations, has found evidence for Belgrade’s claims that there is “ethnic cleansing of Serbs” in Kosova, but the lack of evidence has not put an end to the inciting claims.

In a report titled “Fake pogroms – statistics, lies and confusion in Kosovo”, the organization reminds that in July 2023, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic declared that NATO and the UN had fourteen days to disarm Kosova’s police forces and to protect Kosova Serbs from the ongoing “pogroms and ethnic cleansing” from Albanians. Otherwise, “someone else” would have to do it.

The report notes that warnings that Serbia may need to send troops to Kosova to protect Serbs are not new, citing an August 2018 statement by Serbian President Vucic in which he described Kosova as a ‘gunpowder barrel’

“Everybody will be waiting for an opportunity to hit the other to gain an advantage on the ground. And every day we will worry if they will attack us in the north, where they will attack us, with whose support…” was the Serbian president stating.

However, the statements of 2018 argued that if Serbs are attacked in Kosova, Serbia will protect them. Since 2023, the statements argue that the Serbs are now under attack and must be defended says the Initiative report, which at the end of July 2023 had said that this is a serious threat to peace in the Balkans.

A few months later, the above report recalled Serbian paramilitaries attack on Kosova police of September 24, 2023 attack by a group of armed Serbs killed a member of the Kosovo police.

“It is time to take seriously what is currently being said by politicians in Belgrade. If pogroms are invented, then violence follows. If these false claims are not countered, the situation will escalate further,” the report states, underlining that “it should not be difficult for international organizations to prove false the fake, misleading and dangerous claims of imaginary massacres whenever they occur. No one of the many international observers with ground personnel in Kosova, from KFOR to EULEX, from UNMIK to the OSCE, have seen or described the ‘ethnic cleansing of the Serbs’ or the Albanian ‘terror’ over the years last. But the lack of evidence has not stopped the inciting claims.”

The European Stability Initiative (ESI) is a think tank, which focuses on South East Europe and the EU enlargement.

/a.p./