Kosovo opens border crossings with Serbia
2022.12.29 07:25
Kosovo opens border crossings with Serbia
Budrigannews.com – Hours after protesting Serbs in Kosovo’s north promised to remove roadblocks, Kosovo reopened its largest border crossing with Serbia on Thursday, easing a rise in tensions that has alarmed world powers.
Both the European Association and the US have been squeezing Kosovo and Serbia to move away from a mounting a showdown that has seen Serbia placed its military on the most elevated battle alert.
Since December 10, Serbs in northern Kosovo have been erecting roadblocks in protest at the arrest of a former Serb policeman, the latest in a long line of flashpoints. However, after he was placed under house arrest, they agreed to begin taking them down.
A considerable lot of the detours actually had all the earmarks of being set up on Thursday morning, however authorities had said the cycle could take some time.
The tension was still high. About 50 kilometers from the reopened Merdare crossing, two gravel-filled, burned-out trucks were parked on a bridge near the morally divided town of Mitrovica. Kosovo police claimed to be looking into an arson attack.
Around 50,000 Serbs who live in northern Kosovo deny that Kosovo is a separate nation and that the government in Pristina is legitimate. Numerous Serbs in Serbia and its government back them.
Following a war in 1998-1999 in which NATO intervened to protect ethnic Albanian citizens, Kosovo, a country with a majority of Albanians, declared independence with the support of the West.
After roadblocks were put up on the Serbian side of the border, Kosovo police said they had reopened the Merdare crossing, which is the most important crossing for road freight that connects the landlocked state with countries in western Europe.
They urged diaspora members to use the crossing, which was closed on Tuesday at midnight, to return home for the holidays.
Two boundary different intersections with Serbia in Kosovo’s north stay shut since Dec. 10.
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The West, which supported Kosovo’s independence, and Russia, which supports Serbia in its efforts to prevent Kosovo from joining global organizations like the United Nations, have long been at odds over Kosovo.
On Wednesday, the Kosovo interior minister made allegations that Russia was influencing Serbia to destabilize Kosovo. The Kremlin responded by claiming that Serbia was defending the rights of ethnic Serbs.
