On Sunday evening, during the latest live broadcast of The Gunpowder Chronicles, we opened the programme with a question that has come to define Kosovo’s increasingly volatile political climate. Was the country experiencing a normal democratic crisis, or was it confronting a sustained effort to weaken the state through institutional paralysis, political obstruction, and an atmosphere of intimidation surrounding Prime Minister Albin Kurti?
Kosovo is now heading towards another parliamentary election on 7 June 20261, the third national vote in just sixteen months. The immediate trigger was the repeated failure to elect a president within constitutional deadlines. But throughout the discussion, both of our guests argued that the crisis had expanded far beyond parliamentary procedure into a broader struggle over the stability and direction of the republic itself.
Joining the programme were Ines Burrell, a UK based geopolitical analyst specialising in Russia, European security, and the war in Ukraine, and Dr Gurakuç Kuçi, a scholar of international relations, diplomacy, and hybrid warfare in the Western Balkans.
We began by asking whether Kosovo’s repeated elections reflected a constitutional impasse or a deliberate political strategy of obstruction.
Dr Kuçi described the situation as deeply dangerous because, in his words, it combined “internal institutional paralysis and external extremist intimidation”.
He argued that repeated political deadlock weakened the state’s ability to govern, damaged diplomacy, undermined economic planning, and created instability across Kosovo’s institutions.
“If institutions cannot function normally, if the country is repeatedly pushed into elections, and if constitutional processes are blocked, then the decision making becomes unstable,” he said.
He warned that paralysis created opportunities for hostile actors to exploit Kosovo’s weaknesses. According to Dr Kuçi, Serbia and other actors opposing Kosovo’s sovereignty were already using the deadlock to portray the country as unstable and incapable of governing effectively.
He argued that the crisis was not only institutional, but psychological.
“They want also to mobilise all the people of Serbia to create a mindset in the kamikaze way,” he said, referring to increasingly aggressive rhetoric surrounding Kosovo’s leadership. “Not just against Mr Kurti, but against any public figure that can create resistance to their goals in Kosovo.”
Ines Burrell approached the issue from a different angle. While acknowledging the risks, she argued that the existence of pressure and destabilisation attempts also revealed something important about Kosovo itself.
“In theory, you can turn it around,” she said. “It means that the danger that the government and your main political party presents to the other side, and especially the Serbian side, is so large that they are doing everything in their power and using all their instruments.”
She suggested that the pressure directed at Kosovo demonstrated that Belgrade and its allies recognised the political threat posed by efforts to consolidate Kosovo’s sovereignty.
“They haven’t succeeded,” she said. “They are scared, but they haven’t succeeded.”
Much of the discussion centred on whether Kosovo’s crisis resembled destabilisation methods used elsewhere by Russian or Russian aligned political networks.
Burrell drew direct comparisons between Kosovo’s unresolved dispute over the Association of Serb Majority Municipalities and the failed Minsk process imposed on Ukraine before Russia’s full scale invasion.
“The way I understand it, it basically is supposed to work the same way how Minsk Two was intended to work,” she said. “Donbas was supposed to stay inside Ukraine as long as it would have veto power over what Ukraine decided to do.”
She argued that the same dynamic now existed between Kosovo and Serbia.
“You hold them by the throat, but they hold you by the throat with this one instrument,” she said.
Burrell also described corruption, influence operations, and institutional capture as central elements of the Russian model of destabilisation.
“Russia influences political processes by injecting wrong narratives through church, through corruption, through business operatives,” she said. “It is the same rulebook that Russia is using.”
Dr Kuçi similarly argued that hybrid warfare depended upon weakening institutions rather than direct military conquest.
“Hybrid warfare every time wants weakened institutions,” he said. “And in this way they use the weakness of our institutions.”
He pointed to what he described as organised propaganda campaigns surrounding Kosovo’s elections and political divisions. According to Dr Kuçi, these narratives were designed to divide society and damage public trust in democratic institutions.
As the discussion moved towards Serbia’s role in the crisis, Burrell argued that many European governments still viewed Belgrade through an outdated political framework.
“The Serbia that was before is not the same Serbia that you have today,” she said. “But the European Union is still pretending that Serbia has the same goals and is going in the same direction.”
At the same time, she argued that European governments were constrained by larger geopolitical calculations involving Russia and the wider security situation on the continent.
“Europe has bigger problems,” she said. “These are small problems to Europe because we are all sitting next to this imperial monster called Russia.”
She nevertheless acknowledged frustration over the limited international response to Serbia’s actions following the Banjska attack of September 2023 and the continued protection afforded to Milan Radoicic inside Serbia.
“The European side has different goals to the ones you would like them to have,” she said. “Everybody has their own goals.”
Dr Kuçi focused more heavily on the internal political climate inside Kosovo itself. He argued that opposition parties had crossed a dangerous line by treating every security incident as partisan theatre rather than a national concern.
“We know Mr Kurti is not pro Serbian,” he said. “And we know also that no political party in Kosovo is pro Serbia. Those narratives are damaging our society.”
He criticised political figures and media organisations that had suggested the Banjska attack was somehow orchestrated by Kosovo itself.
“This is unacceptable,” he said. “This is damaging our democracy and damaging our country.”
Throughout the programme, the issue of threats directed at Prime Minister Kurti remained central. We referred repeatedly to statements made by former Serbian intelligence chief Aleksandar Vulin, who publicly invoked Mossad style operations while speaking about Kosovo’s leadership2, as well as to the latest reported death threat traced by Kosovo police to Serbia3 from an account linked to the organisation known as “Severna Brigada”.
Burrell cautioned against overstating Serbia’s capabilities in comparison with Russia, noting that Serbia lacked the strategic power and nuclear leverage that allowed Moscow to operate differently on the international stage.
“Serbia cannot do anything they want,” she said. “They can cause trouble, but they are not Russia.”
Still, she acknowledged that threats and intimidation formed part of hybrid warfare tactics designed to pressure democratic societies without direct military confrontation.
“Threats are a valid instrument for hybrid warfare,” she said.
Dr Kuçi argued that the silence of parts of Kosovo’s political opposition in response to threats against the sitting prime minister was itself becoming politically consequential.
“If anyone attacks our government or our prime minister, now it is Mr Kurti, but tomorrow it could be someone else,” he said.
He warned that normalising conspiratorial narratives about Kosovo’s own institutions risked eroding public confidence and weakening the state from within.
As the discussion concluded, we returned to the central argument that Kosovo’s crisis was no longer simply about elections, coalition disputes, or constitutional procedure. It had become a broader test of whether democratic institutions could withstand sustained paralysis, intimidation, foreign pressure, and the erosion of public trust.
As the programme concluded, the discussion returned to a broader concern running through Kosovo’s current crisis. Repeated elections, institutional deadlock, escalating rhetoric, and unresolved tensions with Serbia are no longer isolated political episodes, but interconnected pressures testing the durability of Kosovo’s democratic institutions. What emerged from the debate was a shared recognition that the deeper risk for Kosovo lies not only in another election cycle, but in the gradual erosion of institutional credibility, public confidence, and political cohesion at a moment of heightened regional uncertainty.
The Forces Driving Kosovo’s Cycle of Crisis
What appears as procedural deadlock in Kosovo is, in effect, a sustained disruption of governance that has stalled reform, weakened security, and forced repeated elections. — Balkan Dispatch.
Kosovo Officials Sound Alarm Over Vulin’s “Operational” Threats Against Prime Minister
Vulin’s chilling remarks, invoking a “Mossad model” to target Kosovo’s Prime Minister, signal a desperate, dangerous attempt to rekindle the ghosts of the region’s tragic past. — Balkan Dispatch.
Serbia’s Threats Against Kosovo’s Prime Minister Are No Longer Implicit
As Kosovo heads toward its third election in sixteen months, threats against Prime Minister Albin Kurti expose deepening regional instability and political paralysis. — Balkan Dispatch.
