When Kosovo’s Oligarch Sides with Its Foe

Shkëlqim Devolli’s embrace of Richard Grenell isn’t diplomacy, it’s a grotesque alliance with a discredited enemy of Kosovo, democracy, and truth, dressed up as statesmanship.

At a luxury resort on Montenegro’s Adriatic coast this week, a quiet meeting took place that says more about the currents shaping the Western Balkans than the carefully staged photographs or vague official statements will ever admit. According to Montenegrin outlet Antenna M¹, Milorad Dodik, the sanctioned², Kremlin-aligned nationalist³ who until days ago was president of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska⁴, met with Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s former special envoy to the Balkans, in the opulent “One and Only” hotel in Portonovi. Also in attendance, reports say, was a Republican congresswoman. Our sources in Washington told the Gunpowder Chronicles that the Republican congresswoman in question was Claudia Tenney⁵ of upstate New York. Montenegrin officials stressed that they had no involvement in the gathering. Dodik’s official aircraft⁶ was tracked returning to Bosnia later that evening.

In isolation, such a meeting might pass as one more in the Balkan carousel of envoys, fixers, and opportunists…