Kosovo’s Institutions Play Putin’s Balkan Game
By certifying Arsenijevic’s party, Kosovo’s institutions are not protecting democracy; they are legitimising Belgrade’s Trojan horse and empowering a Kremlin-styled provocateur with credibility.
Democracy is not meant to be a suicide pact. When a young state faces an orchestrated campaign to hollow out its institutions, the first duty of its bodies is to defend the constitutional order. Kosovo’s Election Complaints and Appeals Panel (ECAP) has now done the opposite. In late August, ECAP ordered the Central Election Commission (CEC) to certify1 Demokracia Serbe, the political vehicle of Aleksandar Arsenijevic, for the October 12th municipal elections. This came days after the same panel compelled the CEC to reinstate2 the Belgrade-directed Serb List for the same ballot, after commissioners initially balked at certifying candidates who simultaneously draw salaries in Serbia’s illegal “parallel institutions” on Kosovo’s soil.
On the surface, both rulings are presented as procedural housekeeping: the commissions, it is said, had not properly grounded their refusals in statute and risked disenfranchising minorities. But to reduce these cases to box-ticking is to miss the wider reality. Certification is not a formality; it is the Republic’s seal of legitimacy. When that seal is extended to actors linked to armed violence, to terrorist-designated networks, and to hostile state structures, the institution confuses due process with self-destruction3.
No case illustrates this more starkly than that of Aleksandar Arsenijevic.
Known locally as “Aco Ludi” [Aco the Madman], Arsenijevic has over the past three years emerged as the principal provocateur in northern Kosovo4. Once a chemistry lecturer in Mitrovica, he has reinvented himself as the chairman of Demokracia Serbe (previously the Civic Initiative “Serbian Survival” and later “Srpska Demokratija”), cultivating an image of community defender while operating as a node in Belgrade’s destabilisation strategy. His method is textbook Kremlin playbook: provoke ethnic tension, orchestrate a scene, film the confrontation, and then narrate it for Western consumption as “repression.”
In May 2023, during violent clashes in Zvecan that left at least 30 NATO peacekeepers wounded, intelligence sources whispered his name among the organisers. He was never charged, but the pattern was visible. By September that year, the Banjska attack5, an armed incursion led by Milan Radoicic of the Serb List, left a Kosovo police officer dead and three Serbian gunmen killed. In the months that followed, photographs surfaced of Arsenijevic in the company of three men implicated in that plot: Marjan Radojevic, Blagoje Spasojevic and Nemanja Stankovic. Two were arrested, one remains at large, wanted on terrorism charges.
Arsenijevic never explained his presence among them and ignored questions sent to him in April 2024 by the Gunpowder Chronicles (formerly The Frontliner Magazine).
The Gunpowder Chronicles and The Frontliner Magazine traced his networks further. In April 2024, we documented his link6 to the Sfens Café Pub in Mitrovica, a site locals described as associated with him and a fugitive named Danijel (Dejan) Đukić. Đukić, police say, is wanted for drug trafficking and for membership in “Civil Defence,” a group the Kosovar government has designated a terrorist organisation7. A mobile phone recovered at Banjska tied him to the attack. He has been photographed with the son of Serbia’s president. The chain is not speculative; it is documented.
By September 2024, the picture had sharpened. Arsenijevic was no longer merely a local agitator. He was meeting U.S. Ambassador Jeffrey Hovenier, U.S. Special Envoy Gabriel Escobar, German Ambassador Jörn Rohde and British diplomats, posting photographs of the meetings to his X account under the handle “Aco_Sfens.”
Each diplomatic handshake became fodder for propaganda loops: proof to his followers that he was not a fringe figure but an “internationally recognised” representative of Kosovo Serbs8. The diplomats may have thought they were keeping channels open. In practice, they were lending oxygen to Belgrade’s most dangerous proxy.
Then came the evidence that stripped away any pretence. In June this year, Kosovo Police, acting with the intelligence agency, prosecutors, and under the eye of NATO’s KFOR and EULEX, dug up a weapons cache in the village of Vallaq, Zvecan.
The arsenal: rocket-propelled grenades, belt-fed machine guns, automatic rifles, grenades, tactical vests, and encrypted radios was enough, the Interior Minister said9, to equip a terrorist unit10. The cache was on property linked to Arsenijevic. The images released by police showed rifles being pulled from plastic piping underground. The response from his party was denial, claiming a political plant. But the denials rang hollow against a pattern of years.
This is who ECAP has just ordered certified.
The chronology matters. In April 2024, independent reporting showed his presence among Banjska-linked figures. In September 2024, we documented his use of staged confrontations and Western meetings as legitimising theatre. In May 2025, he manipulated a high school parade in Mitrovica, weaponising children’s chants of “Kosovo is Serbia” into a propaganda tableau. In June 2025, the weapons cache was unearthed. Each step tightened the case that he is not a misunderstood community voice but a practitioner of hybrid warfare on Kosovo’s soil.
In a short video posted on social media by Kosovo’s Minister of Interior Xhelal Sveçla11, a disturbing scene unfolds: a crowd of Kosovo Serb students, draped in T-shirts emblazoned with Serbian ultranationalist symbols, dances to Chetnik songs while chanting “Kosovo je srce Srbije” (“Kosovo is the heart of Serbia”).
Yet ECAP’s ruling treats none of this as relevant. Instead, it adopts the same tunnel vision it applied to Serb List: a narrow proceduralism that ignores the wider threat.
The danger is not theoretical. For two decades, Kosovo’s institutions designed by international overseers and local elites alike, have normalised Belgrade’s presence in the Republic’s political architecture12. The Serb List, created and directed from Belgrade, became the sole conveyor belt of Serb representation, holding ministries and budgets while boycotting the state. Successive governments tolerated it. The result has been a creeping internal veto, similar to the way Vladimir Putin cultivated proxies in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine before moving to harder power. Aleksandar Vucic, himself a Milosevic-era apparatchik, has perfected this method: Trojan horses clothed in the legitimacy of elections, but yoked to Serbia’s intelligence and security apparatus.
That is the wider canvas against which Kosovo’s institutions should be measuring certification. And yet, when presented with the clearest case of an actor embedded in that machinery, an actor documented with militants, linked to a fugitive in a terrorist group, caught with an arsenal under his ground, ECAP has issued a ruling that reads like surrender.
Kosovo is not short of Serb citizens willing to participate in civic life independent of Belgrade’s control. What they lack is space to breathe, space consistently suffocated by the monopoly of proxies like the Serb List and by figures like Arsenijevic who conflate community advocacy with destabilisation. Certification of such actors does not protect pluralism; it destroys it. It leaves Serb voters in Kosovo with a choice between Belgrade’s handpicked operators and silence.
In any other European democracy, a party whose leader is linked to armed caches and whose circles overlap with a terrorist-designated network would be suspended pending judicial outcome. Germany, Spain, the UK, and others have all barred organisations whose aims or methods undermined the constitutional and democratic order13. To pretend Kosovo has no such right, or worse, to insist it must do the opposite14, is to condemn the Republic to suicide by formality.
The lesson is painfully clear. Arsenijevic is not an outlier. He is the distilled product of two decades of accommodation, appeasement, and international indulgence of Belgrade’s tactics. His certification is not a victory for democracy. It is its corrosion.
Kosovo’s voters will go to the polls in October with ballots that include the names of men who do not recognise their state, whose loyalties are pledged to its neighbour, and whose actions have left police officers, peacekeepers, and citizens wounded or dead. That is not pluralism. It is capitulation dressed up as procedure.
The republic deserves better. Its institutions must remember their purpose is not to preserve appearances but to protect sovereignty. On Aleksandar Arsenijevic, the evidence is no longer circumstantial. ECAP’s ruling has chosen to ignore it. In doing so, it has not defended democracy. It has armed its enemy with legitimacy.
Aleksandar Arsenijevic is not the victim he theatrically pretends to be; he is the living embodiment of Belgrade’s cancer inside Kosovo’s body politic. In June, Kosovo media revealed him behind the wheel of a Volkswagen Passat registered to Nemanja Radivojevic15 »Gandhi« a man charged with the Banjska incursion. Police fines prove it, the car has been untraceable since September 2023, and yet Arsenijevic cruised around in it as if impunity were his birthright. Weeks later, a weapons cache capable of arming a militia was dug out of his property in Vallaç: rocket launchers, mines, rifles, tactical gear. And now, from the comfort of a summer holiday abroad, he dares to cry “fabricated trap.” Kosovo’s institutions, by certifying his party, are not safeguarding democracy, they are prostituting it. To dignify Arsenijevic with electoral legitimacy is not neutrality, it is national self-sabotage. It is to invite the assassin to dinner, hand him the cutlery, and feign surprise when he slits your throat. History will not forgive the cowardice that dresses treason as pluralism.
Aco's Arsenal: Guns, Lies, and Diplomats
On Sunday, Kosovo's Minister of Interior Affairs, Xhelal Sveçla, delivered a chilling update that has sent tremors through the political and security landscape of the Western Balkans. According to the Minister, a police operation conducted in the village of Vallaq in the Zvecan municipality, carried out in collaboration with Kosovo's intelligence agency (AKI), the State Prosecutor's office, and international monitors from KFOR and EULEX, uncovered an extensive weapons cache. What was found, Sveçla stated, could arm an entire terrorist unit.
Democracy or Surrender: The Case Against Serbian List
Moral Eunuchs in the West, Terror in the Balkans — The GPC Balkan Watch.
Weaponised Victimhood: Arsenijevic’s Lie Machine
For nearly two years, Western silence and diplomatic photo-ops have emboldened Aleksandar Arsenijevic, turning a known provocateur into a legitimised actor of Kremlin-style destabilisation. — The GPC Balkan Watch.
One Year After Banjska: The West’s Role in Serbia’s Balkan Escalation
One year after the Banjska attacks, Serbia's aggression and Western appeasement continue to destabilise Kosovo, raising questions about regional security and international accountability. — The GPC Balkan Watch.
Aleksandar Arsenijevic: A Controversial Catalyst in Kosovo’s Political Turmoil
In my latest report, I reveal how Kosovar-Serb Aleksandar Arsenijevic's actions are stirring Kosovo's unrest, highlighting his criminal ties and the looming threat to national security. — The GPC I Unit.
Reuters report: On 29 June 2023, Reuters reported that Kosovo’s government officially labeled two Serb groups: Civil Protection (Civilna Zastita) and the North Brigade (Severna Brigada); as terrorist organisations, citing their alleged recruitment, training, and planning of attacks on local and international institutions in Kosovo. — Reuters.
Violence as Strategy: Arsenijevic’s Playbook and Western Complicity
Aleksandar Arsenijevic manipulates Kosovo’s unrest with Western diplomatic backing, orchestrating violence to justify Belgrade’s aggressive ambitions against Kosovo’s sovereignty. — The GPC Balkan Watch.
Kosovan Interior Minister Xh Svecla — Facebook Post June 22, 2025.
Aco's Arsenal: Guns, Lies, and Diplomats
A massive arms cache linked to Aleksandar Arsenijevic exposes a dangerous nexus of political extremism, Serbian aggression, and Western diplomatic missteps in fragile northern Kosovo. — The GPC Balkan Watch.
Xhelal Svecla’s Facebook Post 23 May, 2025.
A Spy Case, A Warning
A Croatian pilot’s alleged leaks to Serbia’s List expose a network. While Washington and Brussels appease Belgrade, Kosovo faces orchestrated hybrid attacks. Accountability, not ‘de-escalation.’ — The GPC Balkan Watch.
Official Extremism Classification by BfV
In May 2025, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), classified the AfD as a “confirmed extremist” organisation. This elevated their surveillance capabilities over the party significantly — The Guardian.
The classification stemmed from a comprehensive 1,000-page investigation detailing extremist tendencies within AfD — POLITICO.
Marine Le Pen’s Ban from Running for Office
In March 2025, a French court convicted Marine Le Pen, leader of the far‑right National Rally (RN) party, and found her guilty of embezzling EU Parliament funds.
As part of the sentencing, Le Pen received a five-year ban from running for public office, effective immediately including disqualification from the 2027 presidential election. — Euro News.
US, EU and the UK Legitimising Terror in Kosovo
By endorsing Serbian List, the West tramples Kosovo’s constitution, empowers Belgrade’s proxies, and transforms “democracy” into a weapon against Europe’s youngest state. — The GPC Balkan Watch.
Serbian politician Aleksandar Arsenijevic drives the car of the "Banjska terrorist" — IndeksOnline.