The Kosovo government has decided to postpone for 30 days the introduction of an obligation that it would impose the use of license plates for Kosovar cars instead of Serbian ones, still widespread among the country’s Serbian minority. The measure was supposed to take effect at midnight on Monday 1 August, but the riots on Sunday 31 July led Prime Minister Albin Kurti to postpone the plan to 1 September, however reiterating that the obligation will apply to the entire population. Another measure that should have entered into force on 1 August, but which again was postponed to September, would force Serbian citizens who want to enter Kosovo to obtain an additional documentas is already the case for Kosovar citizens arriving in Serbia.

On Sunday, hundreds of people belonging to the Serbian minority parked trucks and cars in front of the two main border crossings between Kosovo and Serbia in protest, forcing local police to close them. The situation risked escalating late in the evening when the Kosovar police made it known that some shots were fired at the police. During a press conference, Serbian President Aleksander Vucic – known for his deeply nationalist positions – said he was in favor of peace, but warned that if the Serbs are threatened they will not give up and “Serbia will emerge victoriousleading several analysts to believe that an armed conflict was imminent.

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The relationship between Kosovo and Serbia has always been rather complicated. After the Second World War, Kosovo – where it already was there is a strong component of Albanian ethnicity – became an autonomous province of Serbia within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. When Slobodan Milosevic, who would later be one of the main architects of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, took power in Serbia at the end of the 1980s, Kosovo was placed under the direct government of Belgrade. The country initially reacted with a peaceful protest, setting up a parallel government funded by the Albanian diaspora, but with little success. Against this backdrop, the Kosovar Liberation Army (KLA) emerged on the scene in 1997, whose main mission was the independence of Kosovo from Serbia, including through violent means. Between 1998 and 1999, Milosevic ordered a military campaign against the KLA, which resulted in a brutal conflict involving thousands of civilians and ended with the armed intervention of NATO, which bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999 and forced Milosevic to surrender.

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, and has been recognized by over one hundred countries, including twenty-two of the twenty-seven member states of the European Union, including Italy. Independence, however, was not recognized by Serbia and its allies Russia and China, which prevented, among other things, Kosovo from joining the United Nations. To date, the Serbian minority in Kosovo is made up of about 100 thousand people out of a total population of 1.8 million; however, the Belgrade government attaches considerable importance to the region and continues to have a very strong influence on the people of Serbian origin in the country.

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The reactions and the latest developments

Although the Kosovar Prime Minister has decided to postpone the entry into force of the license plate rules, the situation remains unstable. There Serbia is among the very few European countries still considered close to Russia; the spokeswoman for Russian Foreign Minister Maria Zakharova sided in favor of Serbia, accusing the Kosovar Prime Minister of being responsible for the tensions and arguing that the decision on number plates and personal documents is “another step towards the expulsion of the Serbian population from Kosovo and the removal of Serbian institutions that ensure the protection and rights of Serbian residents“.

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