It is not enough for prosecutors to demonstrate that crimes occurred during the Kosovo war. Nor is it sufficient to show that Mr Thaçi occupied a position of political or military influence within the Kosovo Liberation Army. International criminal law demands considerably more. The judges must ultimately decide whether the evidence establishes, beyond reasonable doubt, that Hashim Thaçi knowingly and significantly contributed to the commission of specific crimes charged in the indictment through one or more recognised modes of criminal liability.

That burden explains why the prosecution devotes an entire chapter exclusively to Mr Thaçi before examining the remaining accused. Within the architecture of its Final Trial Brief, his alleged role is analysed individually under several distinct categories, each int…

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It begins with a far narrower question.

Did Hashim Thaçi, together with Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi, bear individual criminal responsibility for crimes allegedly committed against specific victims between March 1998 and September 1999?

Everything else follows from that question.

The distinction is not rhetorical. It is the foundation upon which the entire prosecution has been constructed. In its Final Trial Brief1, submitted after years of witness testimony, documentary evidence and forensic examination, the Specialist Prosecutor’s Office does not argue that the Kosovo Liberation Army was, in itself, a criminal organisation. Nor does it contend that Kosovo’s aspiration for independence was unlawful. Instead, it argues that a group of senior political and military leaders allegedly used parts of the KLA’s organisational structure to pursue an additional objective beyond fighti…

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If the judges ultimately convict Hashim Thaçi, what, exactly, will they have convicted?

The answer matters because it will shape not only Kosovo’s political future but also how generations yet unborn come to understand one of Europe’s defining conflicts at the end of the twentieth century.

It is tempting, particularly in societies that have survived war, to collapse every verdict into a judgment upon history itself. Heroes become incapable of wrongdoing. Opponents become incapable of truth. Every prosecution is interpreted as an attack upon the nation. Every acquittal becomes proof that no crime ever occurred. Such thinking may offer political comfort, but it bears little resemblance to either history or law.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers were not established to determine whether Serbia oppressed Kosovo.

That question has long ceased to be legally controversial.

The systematic dismantling of Kosovo’s autonomy after 198…

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These are not the same question.

Whether Kosovo’s war for liberation was legitimate is one matter. Whether individual members of the KLA committed crimes during that conflict, and whether particular commanders bear criminal responsibility for those crimes, is another entirely. International humanitarian law has long drawn a del…

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History is rarely dangerous in itself. What makes history dangerous is its political use. Nations need collective memory. They need places of remembrance, ceremonies and …

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Are we witnessing the final decay of Albania’s post-communist mirage?

When state police turn water cannons on families to shield western luxury investments, does democracy exist or have oligarchic networks simply institutionalised the ballot box?

As Tirana aligns with Belgrade, has the ruling elite traded public trust and regional security for opaque commercial gain?

To uncover how a coastal eco-protest ignited a modern revolution threatening both Edi Rama and the credibility of Brussels, subscribe now to read the full investigation.

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What she did not explain to CNN’s audience was the central question now hanging over Kosovo’s political crisis.

What was her own role in producing it?

That omission matters. It matters not because Osmani is an ordinary opposition figure offering commentary from the edge of events, but because she was Kosovo’s president during the very sequence of institutional breakdown that helped send the country to its third parliamentary election in sixteen months3. She was not merely an observer of the fire. Critics in Kosovo argue that she …

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On 30 April 2026, Albulena Haxhiu, acting president and speaker of parliament, set 7 June 2026 as the date for early elections after parliament failed to elect a president within constitutional deadlines. She said this was not what citizens had wanted, and that Kosovo was being delayed in reforms without need. That phrase matters. Without need. It points to the heart of the crisis. Kosovo has not stumbled into dysfunction. It has been driven there.

The immediate cause was the failure to secure a quorum after repeated attempts to elect a president. But the deeper cause is obstruction by opposition parties that have turned constitutional procedure into a tool of paralysis. PDK, LDK, AAK, and the wider opposition constellation present their conduct as normal democratic resistance. Yet their actions have repeatedly weakened the state at moments when Kosovo needed coherence.

This is not ordinary opposition politics. It is a pattern of disruption that objectively serves Belgrade.

Serbia has never accepted Kosovo as a sovereign state. It still treats Kosovo as part of its constitutional territory, has refused to recognise its independence, and has maintained influence through political, security, financial, and criminal networks, especially in the north. In September 2022, Serbia formalised foreign policy coordination with Russia. One year later, on 24 September 2023, an armed paramilitary operation led by Milan Radoicic killed Kosovo police officer Afrim Bunjaku in Banjska. Kosovo authorities described the attack as terrorism. Radoicic later admitted involvement, yet remains protected by Belgrade.

That attack should have produced a united political response inside Kosovo. Instead, the opposition intensified institutional obstruction. One of the clearest examples was the blocking of Kosovo’s Security Fund, created to strengthen the country’s defence and security capacity. After Banjska, when deterrence became a matter of survival, leading opposition parties sent the fund to the Constitutional Court. The result was delay at the precise moment when Serbia had demonstrated willingness to use force.

This is how a small state is weakened. Not only by tanks or armed groups, but by court referrals, quorum games, procedural traps, and the constant conversion of emergency into stalemate.

The pattern has sharpened around Prime Minister Albin Kurti. Since his landslide victory in 2021, and again through later electoral mandates, Kurti has pursued a policy of state consolidation. His governments have moved against Serbian parallel structures, illegal financial channels, and Belgrade backed mechanisms operating outside Kosovo’s sovereignty. He has refused arrangements that would entrench Serbian influence inside Kosovo’s constitutional order. That has made him the central obstacle to Belgrade’s strategy.

It has also made him a target.

In March 2026, Aleksandar Vulin, Serbia’s former intelligence chief and a close ally of President Aleksandar Vucic, spoke publicly about the need to deal with individuals he described as carriers of anti Serbian policy, invoking the logic of covert operations and naming Kurti directly. Kosovo’s interior minister, Xhelal Sveçla, treated the remarks as a threat. Kosovo’s opposition did not respond with the kind of clear condemnation that any democratic system should expect when the head of government is implicitly threatened by a senior figure from a hostile state.

Then, on 8 May 2026, Kosovo police said a death threat against Kurti had been posted from Serbia through an account linked to Severna Brigada, an organisation Kosovo designated terrorist in June 2023. Police said the post was traced to Kraljevo, Serbia. Again, the political silence inside Kosovo was revealing.

Silence in such circumstances is not restraint. It is a political act. It tells Belgrade that Kosovo’s institutions can be divided even when the elected leadership is threatened. It tells extremist networks that threats against the prime minister can be absorbed as partisan noise. It tells citizens that hatred of Kurti has become so total among parts of the opposition that even the security of the office he holds cannot produce minimum democratic solidarity.

This is the logic now gripping Kosovo. Serbia applies pressure from outside. Domestic actors deepen paralysis from within. Foreign political operatives and regional power brokers add diplomatic vocabulary to the disorder. Media networks amplify accusations. The public is trained to see every threat, every blockage, every institutional collapse as just another episode in party politics.

But it is not.

Kosovo’s crisis increasingly resembles the method Russia has used in post Soviet spaces, adapted to the Balkans. The objective is not always immediate conquest. Sometimes it is enough to prevent consolidation. A state that cannot form institutions, pass security measures, or respond with unity to external threats can be kept permanently provisional. It can be made to look unstable, immature, and unready for deeper Euro Atlantic integration. That instability then becomes the argument used against its sovereignty.

Serbia does not need to govern Kosovo if it can prevent Kosovo from governing itself.

This is why the election on 7 June matters beyond routine democratic rotation. It will test whether Kosovo can break the cycle of obstruction that has trapped the republic since its reformist turn under Kurti. It will also test whether Western policy makers are willing to recognise the failure of their own assumptions. For years, Western diplomacy has tried to manage Serbia through accommodation, hoping to keep Belgrade closer to Europe than Moscow. Yet Serbia has refused to recognise Kosovo, resisted full alignment with sanctions against Russia, deepened ties with Moscow and Beijing, and tolerated actors linked to violence in northern Kosovo.

Accommodation has not moderated Serbia. It has emboldened it.

The danger is not only that Kosovo faces another election. The danger is that repeated elections are becoming the instrument through which the state is exhausted. Every cycle delays reform. Every deadlock weakens institutions. Every silence after a threat lowers the threshold for the next escalation.

Democracies are not defended only by those in power. They are defended when political opponents recognise that some lines cannot be crossed. A threat against a prime minister is not an opportunity for calculation. A paramilitary attack is not a moment for procedural games. A defence fund blocked after an armed assault is not constitutional prudence. It is paralysis at the moment of greatest risk.

Kosovo’s allies should look closely at what is happening before the pattern hardens. The republic is not facing a conventional political crisis. It is facing a layered campaign in which external pressure and internal obstruction reinforce each other. The purpose is to make sovereignty unworkable.

Twenty seven years after the war, and eighteen years after independence, Kosovo is again being asked to prove that it can exist as a functional state. But the greatest threat no longer comes only from across the border. It also operates through the institutions, silences, and calculations of those who claim to defend the republic while helping to disable it.

The question now is not simply who wins on 7 June. It is whether Kosovo can still govern itself after the votes are counted.

Kurti said something Western diplomats have spent years trying not to say aloud.

“After Kosovo’s liberation from Serbia, Serbia needs liberation from Kosovo.” — Kurti said.

Vucic reacted with visible anger. Not because the statement was inaccurate, but because it struck at the core of the political mythology upon which modern Serbian nationalism still feeds.

Watching Vucic later on The Rest Is Politics1, I was struck by how carefully he reconstructs that mythology for Western audiences. He does not arrive as the snarling ultranationalist of the 1…

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According to statements published by the governing Lëvizja Vetëvendosje party, Hysni Mehani, the party’s branch leader in Skenderaj and a deputy minister in the Ministry of Finance, was physically assaulted while drinking coffee with party activists and former deputy Arjeta Fejza at a café in the town centre. The party accused Sami Lushtaku, the mayor of Skenderaj and a senior figure linked to the Democratic Party of Kosovo, known as PDK, together with his bodyguards and associates, of carrying out the attack.

Photographs released by Vetëvendosje appeared to show Mehani bloodied in the face2. The party alleged that he was first struck with fists and later hit in the head with a glass,…

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Was the latest death threat against Kosovo’s Prime Minister an isolated act of extremist intimidation, or the latest stage of a years long campaign designed to normalise political violence against leaders resisting Belgrade’s influence?

As Kosovo heads toward its third election in sixteen months, police say the threat originated in Serbia, from a profile linked to a group already designated terrorist by Kosovo’s government. But the deeper story stretches far beyond one Facebook post, into alleged assassination plots, paramilitary attacks, disinformation campaigns, foreign political operatives, and the silence of Kosovo’s own opposition parties.

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On 30.04.2026, Albulena Haxhiu, acting president and at the same time speaker of parliament, set 7th of June, 2026 as the date for early elections. This will be the third parliamentary vote in just 16 months. The formal explanation is procedural, the failure to elect a president within constitutional deadlines, after five attempts to secure quorum. But there is nothing organic about this crisis. It has been constructed, layer by layer, through sustained obstruction.

Haxhiu stated, “this is not what citizens wanted… they expect unity when it comes to the interests of the country… we are being delayed in many reforms, without any need”.

That admission is critical. There was no structural inevitability that forced Kosovo into this cycle. There was a political choice to block, delay, and exhaust the institutional process.

At the centre of this stands the opposition, a configuration of actors that includes figures such as Bedri Hamza of PDK, Ramush Haradinaj of AAK, and Lumir Abdixhiku of LDK, alongside broader networks tied historically to the political order shaped during and after the 20 year dominance associated with Hashim Thaçi. Their public language is measured, constitutional, even conciliatory. PDK speaks of accepting any date within constitutional limits. AAK calls elections “a chance for the country”. LDK speaks of a “union of the right”. But the substance of their conduct tells a different story.

What I see is not a conventional opposition. What I see is a Serbian sleeping cell embedded within Kosovo’s political system, functioning to hold the country hostage through procedural sabotage.

This assessment is grounded in a sequence of events that extends well beyond the present electoral crisis. It reaches back to coordinated efforts that align domestic obstruction with external strategic pressure from Belgrade. The Serbian List, operating as an extension of official Serbian policy, played a leading role in the paramilitary operation of September 2023, led by Milan Radoicic, which resulted in the killing of Kosovo police officer Afrim Bunjaku. That operation followed an earlier failed political attempt to secure the north of Kosovo through negotiated arrangements that would have effectively transferred strategic territory of Kosovo to Serbia, with approval of Hashim Thaçi.

When those avenues collapsed, the strategy escalated. Serbia formalised coordination of its foreign policy with Moscow on 24.09.2022, reinforcing its alignment with Russian geopolitical objectives. From that point forward, pressure intensified, institutional withdrawals by Kosovo Serbs, road blockades, and ultimately armed incursion on Sept 24, 2023.

Throughout this escalation, the domestic opposition did not act as a stabilising force. It acted in ways that weakened Kosovo’s institutional response, often redirecting blame toward Prishtina itself.

The pattern deepened after the emergence of a new political leadership under Albin Kurti, whose electoral victories in 2021, February 2025, and again on 28.12.2025 represented a plebiscitary mandate for state consolidation and disengagement from Serbian influence. Kurti’s government began dismantling the entrenched networks that had allowed Belgrade’s influence to persist within Kosovo’s institutions for two decades of postwar Kosovo.

It is precisely at this point that obstruction intensified.

The opposition did not merely criticise policy. It systematically attempted to block governance. It rejected offers that went far beyond standard coalition compromise. Kurti, according to our observation, offered ministerial positions, the role of deputy prime minister, and even the possibility for the opposition to propose a presidential candidate. These are extraordinary concessions. They were rejected in full.

The refusal to elect a president is therefore not a failure of negotiation. It is the culmination of a strategy to paralyse the state.

The blocking of the Sovereign Fund after the 2023 attack is a case in point. This fund was designed to strengthen Kosovo’s defensive capacity at a time when Serbia had already demonstrated willingness to deploy paramilitary force. The opposition jointly referred it to the Constitutional Court, where it has remained unresolved for three years to this day1. The result is strategic delay in Kosovo’s ability to prepare for future aggression.

That outcome serves Belgrade, not Prishtina.

The involvement of external actors further reinforces this pattern. Richard Grenell is identified in a series of our investigative findings as a central figure in earlier political interventions, including the 2020 collapse of Kosovo’s government2. His activities are described as aligned with Serbian and Russian interests, with additional references to connections involving Viktor Orban and Vladimir Plahotniuc, both associated with pro Russian political networks.

The continuity of this network is visible in subsequent events3. A meeting in New York, attended by Vjosa Osmani, organised under Grenell’s auspices and allegedly sponsored by Serbian interests4, marked a turning point. The absence of transparency around that meeting, combined with later political manoeuvres, including the dissolution of a parliament5 representing 51 percent of the electorate, raises profound concerns about political alignment and institutional loyalty.

Osmani’s trajectory reflects a broader instability within Kosovo’s political elite. Her early presidency was marked by competence and credibility. But later actions, including reported connections with business networks such as the Devolli group and political proximity to figures linked to Belgrade aligned interests such as Albanian PM Edi Rama, former President Hashim Thaçi and Richard Grenell6, suggest a shift that cannot be ignored.

This is not merely political disagreement. It is potential exposure of the state’s highest office to external influence7.

The silence that followed explicit threats from Aleksandar Vulin is perhaps the most alarming indicator. Vulin openly suggested that Serbia should consider the killing or abduction of Kurti. In any functioning democratic system, such a statement would trigger immediate and unequivocal condemnation. In Kosovo, the response from both the opposition and the presidency was silence8.

Silence in this context is not neutrality. It is complicity.

The pattern extends further. Attempts to assassinate Kurti are described as having occurred during the 2021 and 2025 election periods9, involving operatives allegedly connected to networks spanning Kosovo and Albania. These attempts were reportedly exposed before execution. While such claims require continuous investigation, their consistency within the broader pattern reinforces the perception of a sustained campaign10 to remove a political leadership committed to breaking from Serbian influence.

Even Albania’s political leadership is drawn into this web. Our investigative findings describe a coordinated alignment between official Tirana11 under Edi Rama and Belgrade, aimed at reshaping Kosovo’s constitutional and territorial framework in Serbia’s favour. The lack of response from Tirana to Vulin’s threats further compounds these concerns.

At the institutional level, the crisis has now reached a point where even the Central Election Commission is incomplete. Haxhiu warned that with only 10 members instead of 11, “nothing is certified”. This means that the very process meant to resolve the crisis is itself at risk of paralysis.

This is how a state is held hostage, not through a single decisive act, but through cumulative obstruction across political, legal, and security domains.

From a geopolitical perspective, the resemblance to tactics used in post Soviet states is unmistakable. Russia’s strategy has long relied on internal proxies to block state consolidation. Serbia, aligned with Moscow, appears to be applying a similar model in Kosovo. You do not need to control territory if you can control dysfunction. You do not need to annex if you can prevent consolidation.

Kosovo today is trapped within that logic.

The elections of 07.06.2026 will therefore carry a weight far beyond routine democratic rotation. They will determine whether the republic can break free from a system of internal sabotage that has kept it in a perpetual state of crisis.

What is at stake is not simply governance. It is the survival of Kosovo as a functional, sovereign state.

And the central question remains, how long can a republic endure when its greatest threat operates not from across its borders, but from within its own institutions?

Kosovo can appear, from a distance, as one more small Balkan state trapped in its own tempests. That is the wrong way to begin. Kosovo is not merely another quarrelsome parliamentary republic. It is a country whose modern political life was forged in catastrophe. In 1998 and 1999, Serbian and Yugoslav forces carried out a campaign of mass violence, forced expulsion and terror against Kosovo Albanians. Human Rights Watch documented the expulsion of more than 850,000 ethnic Albanians in the twelve weeks after the NATO air campaign began, while NATO itself describes its intervention as an effort to protect Kosovo Albanians from ethnic cleansing. The war ended with the withdrawal of Serbian forces and the deployment of KFOR. Kosovo later declared independence in 2008, but Serbia still refuses to recognise it, and Russia has remained Belgrade’s most important great power backer on the question.

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That is the warning at the centre of Dr Sadri Ramabaja’s recent analysis, published by the Albanian Institute for Geopolitics in Prishtina on 19 April 20261. His argument is not that every institutional blockage in the Balkans is engineered by Moscow, nor that local actors are mere proxies of external powe…

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The exhibition, titled “Massacres in Kosovo 1998-1999”, drew from a broader body of work documenting 105 incidents. Organisers stated that only those cases supported by photographic evidence and witness testimony were included in the public display, while the full dataset appears in a 2024 publication of the same name. The initiative received financial support from Kosovo’s Assembly alongside private and international donors.

In public statements, the organisers said their work relied primarily on data compiled by the Humanitarian Law Center, led by Natasa Kandic. They noted that Kosovo institutions still lack an official, comprehensive registry of war victims, making existing datasets the only available reference.

Within t…

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For a country accustomed to political turbulence, the decision was immediately cast as clarification. Yet in practice, it exposed a far more consequential struggle, one that extends beyond constitutional interpretation into the foundations of Kosovo’s political order, its reform trajectory, and its vulnerability in a volatile regional landscape.

The origins of the crisis lie in a parliamentary session on 5 March. On that day, Kosovo’s assembly convened to i…

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The decision, described by officials as a de facto “non grata” designation, follows unusually sharp public criticism by Ms Gërvalla of a joint editorial by Albania’s prime minister, Edi Rama, and Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vucic. In that article, published in a German newspaper2, the two leaders proposed a model of European Union integration that would grant Western Balkan countries access to the bloc’s single market and Schengen area without full political membership or voting rights.

For readers unfamiliar with the region, the dispute touches on a sensitive geopolitical fault line. Kosovo, that declared independence in 2008, remains unrecognised by Serbia. Albania, Kosovo’s closest ethnic and poli…

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On Serbian television, a former chief of Serbia’s intelligence service calmly invoked the operational doctrine of one of the world’s most formidable clandestine organisations and asked a simple question. If Israel’s Mossad can target those it considers enemies of the state, why should Serbia not do the same.

The man making that remark was Aleksandar Vulin, a long-time political ally of Serbian president Aleksandar Vucic and until recently the director of Serbia’s Security Intelligence Agency, the BIA. In his televised appearance he spoke of individuals he described as carriers of “anti-Serbian policy”. He spoke of making plans. He spoke of identifying people by name and surname.

And then he spoke about Kosovo’s prime minister1.

“Albin Kurti,” he said, “is not afraid that anything will ever happen to him, neither to him nor to the people around him.”

For a region whose modern political history has been shaped by assassinations, secret police operations and state-sponsored violence, the meaning of that language did not require interpretation.

It sounded like a threat.

It arrived at a moment when the political architecture of Kosovo itself was already under strain. And it exposed, with unsettling clarity, the degree to which the fragile security equilibrium of the Western Balkans continues to rest on political choices made in Belgrade, Moscow and the capitals of the West.

The response that followed revealed something equally troubling.

Many of the institutions that publicly present themselves as guardians of stability in the region chose silence.

Kosovo’s own presidency offered no comment. Opposition parties that have spent two decades portraying themselves as defenders of the state issued no clear condemnation. Western diplomatic missions asked directly for comment declined to answer or avoided the substance of the question.

Only a handful of voices spoke openly.

Those voices, drawn from security analysts and political observers in Kosovo and Western Europe, describe a strategic environment in which the rhetoric emerging from Belgrade cannot be dismissed as theatrical nationalism. They argue it reflects a deeper doctrine of pressure, psychological warfare and geopolitical manoeuvre directed against the most pro-Western political leadership Kosovo has elected since independence.

And that leadership has just been reaffirmed by the electorate.

On 28 December 2025, in an election that produced one of the most decisive mandates in the country’s recent political history, the citizens of Kosovo delivered a second landslide endorsement2 to Prime Minister Albin Kurti and the reformist political movement that has governed the republic for the past six years.

Fifty-one per cent of voters supported Kurti’s leadership, confirming a clear majority mandate to continue the project of consolidating Kosovo’s democratic institutions, confronting entrenched corruption networks and aligning the country firmly with the Euro-Atlantic political order.

That democratic choice should have strengthened the stability of the young republic.

Instead, the months that followed have revealed a convergence of internal political conflict and external pressure that now threatens to reopen the very questions Kosovo believed it had settled after the war of 1999.

The latest episode began with the words of Aleksandar Vulin.

But the deeper story lies in what happened after.

Within days of Vulin’s televised remarks, Kosovo’s interior minister, Xhelal Sveçla, issued a stark warning.

“The statement of former BIA director Aleksandar Vulin, made in the context of developments in the Middle East where he refers to the Mossad model and asks ‘if Israel can do it why can’t we’, is unacceptable and deeply threatening,” Sveçla wrote in a public statement3.

“To import analogies from a conflict defined by open warfare, armed threats and declared operations against actors considered enemies, and apply them in reference to the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kosovo, Mr Albin Kurti, implies the normalisation of the logic of secret operations as a tool of threat and direct destabilisation in the Balkans.”

The warning carried particular weight because of Vulin’s history.

He is not a marginal commentator. He is a central figure in Serbia’s security establishment, a former head of its intelligence agency and a political ally whose career has long intertwined with both the Serbian presidency and Russian strategic influence in the region.

Sveçla pointed directly to that connection.

“It is well known that Aleksandar Vulin has maintained close political and institutional relations with Russia, including intelligence structures, as well as with the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic,” he said. “For this activity the United States has placed him under sanctions.”

Those sanctions were imposed by the U.S. Treasury in July 20234, citing allegations of corruption, organised crime links and cooperation with Russian intelligence actors.

Yet the significance of Vulin’s words lies less in the legal history surrounding him than in the strategic doctrine they reveal.

Security analysts who responded to questions for describe the remarks not as a spontaneous provocation but as part of a wider pattern of communication emerging from Belgrade.

Dr Sadri Ramabaja, a political analyst in Kosovo, argues that Vulin’s statement must be read on two levels.

“The statement by Aleksandar Vulin should be read on two levels: as an instrument of internal political rhetoric and as a signal of a broader security paradigm that is being articulated in Belgrade,” he said.

“It is not simply an isolated declaration but linked to a strategic discourse that has appeared repeatedly in Serbian politics during the past decade.”

According to Ramabaja, the rhetoric serves multiple purposes simultaneously.

It mobilises nationalist sentiment within Serbia. It strengthens the authority of the security elite. And it constructs a narrative in which Serbian political leaders portray themselves as guardians of a nation under permanent external threat.

Within that narrative, identifying individuals beyond Serbia’s borders as enemies of the state becomes politically useful.

Ramabaja describes the framework in explicitly doctrinal terms.

• The first element is the externalisation of threats, the identification of individuals outside Serbia as carriers of “anti-Serbian policy”.

• The second is the legitimisation of intelligence operations beyond national borders.

• The third is the construction of a narrative of permanent national danger.

“These elements,” he said, “are characteristic of what security studies describe as expanded ethno-national security doctrines.”

In regions where ethnic conflict has historically shaped political relations, such doctrines have often served as precursors to destabilising strategies.

Another analyst5, Dr Gurakuç Kuçi, frames the rhetoric in the language of hybrid warfare.

“Hybrid warfare begins with a narrative and psychological pressure,” he explained.

Hybrid conflict, in his analysis, begins with narrative construction and psychological pressure long before any overt confrontation takes place.

“Whenever propaganda or threatening language spreads, it indicates expansionist intentions,” Kuçi said.

The language used by Vulin, he argues, fits within a pattern of strategic communication designed to produce both internal mobilisation and external intimidation.

“From Vulin’s language we understand that their approach retains the tradition of intelligence-driven operations dating back to Yugoslavia, what was once called ‘special war’.”

The psychological objective is clear.

• Create uncertainty.

• Generate fear.

• Signal capability.

For Kosovo’s leadership, such rhetoric carries particular historical resonance.

Sveçla pointed to the legacy of political assassinations targeting Albanian activists during the Cold War period.

“Our recent history shows that Serbian intelligence structures were involved in the assassination of prominent Albanian political activists such as Jusuf Gervalla, Bardhosh Gervalla and Kadri Zeka,” he said.

“When Vulin says Serbian intelligence ‘knows how to do this’, he refers to a dangerous precedent.”

The memory of those operations forms part of a broader historical continuum.

Kosovo’s path to statehood was forged in resistance to a Serbian state apparatus that had already demonstrated its willingness to deploy violence against civilian populations6.

The revocation of Kosovo’s autonomy by Slobodan Milosevic in 1989 initiated a decade of systematic repression against the Albanian majority. Public institutions were dismantled, political representation suppressed and civil society forced underground.

The war that followed culminated in the NATO intervention of 1999 after Serbian security forces launched a campaign of mass displacement and violence against the population.

More than eight hundred thousand Kosovo Albanians were expelled from their homes in a matter of weeks.

The war ended only after seventy-eight days of NATO air strikes forced Serbian forces to withdraw.

Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008 represented the culmination of that long struggle.

But Serbia has never recognised it.

For Belgrade, Kosovo remains constitutionally part of its territory. For Kosovo’s citizens, independence is the foundation of their political identity.

Between those two positions lies one of the most unresolved disputes in Europe.

The present moment illustrates how fragile that equilibrium remains.

While Vulin’s rhetoric raised alarms in Pristina, Serbia has simultaneously expanded its military capabilities in ways that have unsettled neighbouring countries.

President Aleksandar Vucic confirmed in March that Serbia has acquired Chinese supersonic ballistic missiles, the CM-400 system, making it the only European country to possess them.

The missiles can strike targets hundreds of kilometres away at speeds approaching five times the speed of sound.

Their acquisition has triggered concern among regional governments, including Croatia, which has requested consultations within NATO.

Serbia insists the weapons are purely defensive. But the strategic symbolism is unmistakable.

Over the past five years, according to international arms registers, nearly two thirds of Serbia’s imported weaponry has come from China. Russian systems remain integrated into its air force and air defence networks.

The result is a military posture that increasingly blends Eastern technological partnerships with Western diplomatic engagement.

Serbia continues to negotiate accession to the European Union.

At the same time it refuses to join European sanctions against Russia and maintains deep political links with Moscow.

Vulin himself has articulated that alignment openly.

During a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin he declared that Serbia was not only Russia’s strategic partner but its ally, adding that Serbia would never join NATO and would never impose sanctions on Russia.

That geopolitical balancing act forms the wider context in which the current rhetoric must be understood.

For Kosovo’s government, the message is not merely rhetorical.

It is strategic.

Defence minister Ejup Maqedonci warned that Serbia’s expanding military capacity combined with its refusal to recognise Kosovo’s sovereignty creates a dangerous dynamic.

“When these developments are accompanied by direct territorial claims against Kosovo and rhetoric that denies our statehood,” he said, “they create real concerns for security and stability in the region.”

He pointed specifically to the armed attack in the northern village of Banjska in September 2023, which Kosovo authorities describe as a terrorist assault organised by Serbian-backed paramilitary structures.

“These developments clearly demonstrate that hegemonic approaches within political circles in Serbia often translate into concrete actions that endanger regional security.”

Against that background, the silence of many political actors has been striking.

Kosovo’s opposition parties, including the Democratic League of Kosovo and the Democratic Party of Kosovo, declined to respond to detailed questions regarding Vulin’s remarks.

The office of President Vjosa Osmani also provided no answer to questions asking whether the presidency viewed the statement as a direct threat against the country’s leadership.

The absence of response carries political significance.

Kosovo’s domestic political landscape has been deeply polarised since the reformist government of Albin Kurti first came to power.

Critics within the country’s old political elite have repeatedly opposed his anti-corruption agenda and his attempts to dismantle networks of patronage that dominated the post-war state.

The recent constitutional crisis triggered by President Osmani’s controversial dissolution of parliament has further deepened that division7.

But Ramabaja believes the silence of the opposition reflects more than tactical calculation.

“This silence from the opposition speaks volumes about the real situation they are going through,” he said.

He describes opposition parties as organisations that increasingly resemble economic corporations rather than political institutions, driven by internal rivalry rather than a coherent strategic vision for the state.

In such an environment, reacting strongly to threats against the government risks strengthening the very leadership they oppose.

Remaining silent avoids that dilemma. But the consequences extend beyond domestic politics.

“The silence of a segment of the political class in Kosovo may be interpreted in Belgrade as an indication of internal fragmentation,” Ramabaja said.

In international security analysis, he explains, visible internal fragmentation often creates what analysts call a “political opportunity window”.

External actors interpret division as weakness and increase pressure accordingly.

offers a similar warning.

“Situations involving threats from outside should not be treated as daily news and allowed to pass without reaction,” he said.

Threats from hostile states require at least minimal political cohesion. Otherwise the signal sent to adversaries is one of vulnerability.

Beyond Kosovo, Western institutions have also responded cautiously.

NATO’s KFOR peacekeeping mission emphasised its commitment to maintaining security but declined to address the specific remarks made by Vulin.

“KFOR has a robust, visible and flexible posture across Kosovo,” its press office said, adding that the mission continues to implement its United Nations mandate to ensure a safe and secure environment.

For further comment on the political statements themselves, the mission referred questions back to Kosovo’s institutions.

The European Union’s external affairs service offered an even shorter response.

“We do not comment on comments,” an EU spokesperson told this week.

That diplomatic restraint reflects a long-standing Western strategy toward Serbia8.

European officials argue that continued engagement is necessary to keep Belgrade anchored within the European political orbit and to limit Moscow’s influence in the Balkans.

Critics counter that the approach has allowed nationalist rhetoric to flourish without consequence.

Noel Hadjimichael, a defence and security analyst associated with the British Defence and Security Circle in London, frames the issue in broader strategic terms.

“Serbia has the opportunity to disclaim provocative narrative aimed at destabilising its neighbours,” he said.

“Such action by leading political voices only lessen Serbia’s standing.”

From the perspective of Western security policy, he argues, the stability of Kosovo’s democratic institutions carries wider geopolitical significance.

“Western partners across Europe value a stable, responsible and responsive Kosovo,” Noel said.

“A Kosovo that denies Russia’s toxic and harmful influence across the West Balkans region is a victory for liberal values.”

Small democracies on Europe’s geopolitical frontier, he added, deserve active support from the international community.

That support has historically been central to Kosovo’s survival.

Nearly six hundred American troops remain deployed within the NATO-led KFOR mission that continues to guarantee security across the territory.

Recent reports suggesting that Washington might reduce its military presence triggered alarm among members of the U.S. Congress9.

In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers warned that any reduction of American forces could destabilise not only Kosovo but the wider Western Balkans at a moment when Russian influence remains active in the region.

“Reducing the U.S. presence risks destabilising not only Kosovo but the wider region,” the lawmakers wrote.

Their warning highlights the strategic reality underpinning the current crisis.

Kosovo sits at the intersection of competing geopolitical projects.

One vision sees the Western Balkans fully integrated into the democratic and security architecture of Europe and NATO.

The other seeks to preserve zones of influence in which authoritarian actors maintain leverage through political fragmentation and unresolved territorial disputes.

In that contest, the stability of Kosovo’s democratic government carries significance far beyond its borders.

The republic’s current leadership has defined itself explicitly as pro-Western.

Its electoral mandate is rooted in the promise of institutional reform, transparency and alignment with Euro-Atlantic political norms.

That trajectory places it in direct conflict with the networks of influence that have historically shaped the region.

For Moscow, the Western Balkans represent one of the few remaining arenas in Europe where geopolitical friction can still be generated at relatively low cost.

For Belgrade, Kosovo remains both a national myth and a strategic bargaining chip.

For the West, Kosovo is a test of whether the political architecture built after the wars of the 1990s can withstand the pressures of a new geopolitical era.

The remarks delivered by Aleksandar Vulin therefore resonate far beyond a single televised discussion.

They expose the fragile line separating rhetoric from strategy in a region where history has repeatedly demonstrated how quickly one can become the other.

They also reveal the uncomfortable reality that the defence of democratic institutions often depends not only on military guarantees but on political clarity.

When threats are spoken openly and institutions respond with silence, the balance of power begins to shift.

Kosovo’s history offers a warning about what can follow when that balance collapses.

Whether the region has learned enough from that past remains an open question.

Aleksandar Vulin, Serbia’s former director of the Security Intelligence Agency BIA and a longtime political ally of President Aleksandar Vucic, sparked the latest controversy during a televised discussion in Serbia in which he invoked the operational methods of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad when speaking about individuals he described as promoters of “anti-Serbian policy”.

“...the Serbian state must act. After this I would ask our service to make a clear plan about how we will d…

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