Speaking on MCN | Prime Time News Hour, Mr. Xhymshiti said the Election Complaints and Appeals Panel (ECAP) had ordered certification for the Serb List of Milan Radoicic and for Serb Democracy, led by Aleksandar Arsenijevic, despite mounting concerns over links to armed structures and the 2023 Banjska attack2. “Certification is the Republic’s seal of legitimacy,” he said, warning that extending it to figures with such ties “confuses due process with self-destruction.”

What Xhymshiti said on air

On parliamentary tactics and “sleepers”: He criticised opposition parties for, in his view, enabling Belgrade-directed agendas inside Kosovo’s institutions. Citing a German adage about normalising extremists by sharing the table with them, he argued that parts of the opposition were “functioning as Belgrade’s sleeping bears inside institutions.”

Xhymshiti, drew on a German proverb to illustrate his point:

“If nine people sit at a table with a Nazi and do not protest, then it is not nine people and one Nazi, it is ten Nazis at the table. In the same way, when deputies in Kosovo’s Parliament sit alongside the Serb List and fail to use their votes to block or remove them, we no longer have Albanian MPs standing against the Serb List. We have only the Serb List.”

On Arsenijevic and certification: He asserted that Arsenijevic is linked to Serbia’s security services and networks implicated in the Banjska incursion. He noted that Kosovo authorities publicly displayed a weapons cache found in Vallaq/Zvecan in June on property linked to Arsenijevic, allegations Arsenijevic’s circle has denied and questioned why ECAP’s ruling treated such context as irrelevant to certification.

Xhymshiti said:

“Just as Vladimir Putin seeded ‘sleeping agents’ across Georgia and Ukraine before escalation, Serbia has installed its own ‘sleeping bears’ in Kosovo, not only within parliament but also among judges and prosecutors. Cloaked as neutral officials, they quietly tilt institutions toward Belgrade’s agenda, delaying justice, legitimising proxies, and eroding trust in the rule of law. This is the same Kremlin playbook: when open aggression falters, hollow the state from within, leaving its sovereignty compromised before a shot is fired.”

On Western diplomats: Mr. Xhymshiti argued that high-profile meetings between Arsenijevic and Western envoys, widely circulated by Arsenijevic served as “legitimising theatre,” and he criticised what he described as permissive Western messaging that pressures Pristina to “de-escalate” while failing to exact consequences from Belgrade for armed incidents.

On precedent and state duty: He maintained that European democracies have legal means to restrict organisations whose aims or methods undermine constitutional order, and said Kosovo’s duty is to protect sovereignty while preserving space for Serb citizens who participate independently of Belgrade’s control.

How our reporting supports those claims

1) Arsenijevic’s proximity to Banjska-linked figures: documented.
Our investigations (April–September 2024) published photographs of Arsenijevic alongside Marjan Radojevic, Blagoje Spasojevic, and Nemanja Stankovic, men identified by Kosovo Police in connection with the Sept. 24, 2023 Banjska attack. Two were later detained; one remains wanted. Arsenijevic did not answer multiple requests for comment at the time3.

2) The weapons cache in Vallaq (June 2025) publicly announced, politically disputed.
In June, Kosovo’s interior minister announced4 a multi-agency search, observed by KFOR and EULEX that unearthed rifles, machine guns, explosives, and tactical kit on property linked to Arsenijevic. His party called it a fabrication; prosecutors have not yet announced charges. The discovery nonetheless aligns with a pattern our reporting has traced since Banjska: cached arms and encrypted comms supporting hybrid operations5.

3) Networked ties to designated structures and fugitives.
Our April 2024 reporting connected Arsenijevic’s milieu to locales and individuals linked to “Civilna Zaštita/Civil Defense,” a group Kosovo designated a terrorist organisation in 20236, and to Danijel (Dejan) Đukić, wanted for narcotics and tied by a recovered handset to the Banjska plot. Separate local records we reviewed indicate Arsenijevic drove a vehicle registered to Nemanja Radivojevic “Gandhi,” charged in the Banjska case. He did not respond to questions on these points.

4) Diplomatic optics leveraged as political capital.
From September 2024 onward, Arsenijevic publicised meetings with former U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Hovenier, former U.S. Special Envoy Gabriel Escobar, German Ambassador Jorn Rohde, and British diplomats. As Mr. Xhymshiti argued on MCN, those images whatever the intent of the diplomats, have been used domestically to frame him as an internationally endorsed interlocutor7, complicating efforts to distinguish community advocacy from orchestrated provocation8.

5) Policy context: certification by procedure vs. security risk.
Our Aug. 31, 2025 analysis (“Kosovo’s Institutions Play Putin’s Balkan Game9”) examined how ECAP compelled certification of Serb List and Serb Democracy' on procedural grounds, without assessing security implications, a narrow mandate in law, but one that, as Xhymshiti contends, can collide with the state’s duty to defend the constitutional order when party structures overlap with armed networks.

Why this matters ahead of Oct. 12

The decisions place Kosovo’s institutions at a difficult junction: safeguarding minority participation while preventing the normalisation of proxy actors tied to armed coercion. As Mr. Xhymshiti stressed, Serb citizens who reject Belgrade’s control exist, but their space is constricted when ballots are dominated by proxies and when violent networks mingle with politics.

Bottom line: On MCN TV, Mr. Xhymshiti warned that Kosovo risks “arming its enemy with legitimacy.” The body of reporting produced by the Gunpowder Chronicles, from Banjska-adjacent associations to the Vallaq cache and the use of diplomatic imagery, underpins the thrust of that warning, even as contested facts proceed through investigations and courts.

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