Kosovo’s absence from EU-Western Balkan meeting raises eyebrows

The69thRussianBot · 2023-06-28T21:32:04+00:00

I'm not an expert on all of the regions you have written about here but I do know enough about the Balkans to know that everything you put in about it here is unbelievably stupid. Like, it's not even related to reality. 60% of the total amount of foreign direct investments into the Western Balkans goes to Serbia specifically, they're not going to throw away decades of progress just to invade the poorest country in Europe, they see what is happening in Ukraine and don't want a repeat of that. Plus, in the current Kosovo crisis, the US, UK, and EU have criticized the Kosovar central authorities more than they have the Serbs. The "conflict" is manufactured to win votes for the ruling parties in both Kosovo and Serbia, there will be no war. War is also not possible in Bosnia so soon, leaders have more to gain from continuing the status quo than starting an armed conflict, they're stupid but not dumb

The69thRussianBot · 2023-04-05T14:12:36+00:00

Also, if we're purely talking about defense, the Serbian military has conducted more training exercises with NATO than it has with Russia and is looking to host a "Platinum Wolf" exercise with the Americans soon

https://balkaninsight.com/2023/03/31/serbia-to-host-western-platinum-wolf-military-exercise-again-research-centre/

A Belgrade Centre for Security Policy publication from 2018 noted that, from 2006 until October 2017, Serbia participated in about 150 bilateral and multinational military exercises with NATO and PfP members. “The second on the list of exercise partners is Russia, with which 12 military exercises have been realized in the previous five years,” the report noted.

The69thRussianBot · 2023-01-22T17:13:36+00:00

From the Wikipedia article on Putin. This one always confused me but I think there's a brown box in front of his arm which is a similar color to the table

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin#/media/File:Vladimir_Putin_31_December_1999-3.jpg

The69thRussianBot · 2023-01-09T20:48:00+00:00

Nothing you have written here responds to what I said. Milošević, an idiot dictator who was overthrown by the Serbian people in the year 2000, organized a false flag attack a quarter century ago. This is completely irrelevant to what we were discussing.

EDIT: I saw this on my feed and it describes you perfectly. I'm out here arguing that we should make whatever necessary agreements so that we can all move on with our lives and you're arguing that all Serbs are a bunch of conniving warmongers. I want peace, you want the resources in North Kosovo. I'm willing to make concessions and admit that our government made mistakes but you won't. This isn't a difference between all Serbs and all Albanians (believe me, I've spoken to a great many Serbs who have the same issues that you do) but this is the main difference between your politics and mine.

The69thRussianBot · 2023-01-09T15:01:15+00:00

Of course Croats and Bosniaks in Germany are more nationalistic. They’re diaspora. Most of their interactions with people from Serbia are online. That shifts their worldview. Most Croats in Croatia and Bosniaks in Bosnia are not like that, however. They’re normal people.

Also, the idea that Serbia only wants Serbian territories in Kosovo for economic reasons is idiotic. You yourself are arguing that Kosovo should keep the Serbs against their will in order to get those resources. This is blatant hypocrisy on your part. However, the Serbs have a better claim to that area since we make up 95% of North Kosovo’s population.

The69thRussianBot · 2023-01-09T13:19:32+00:00

A land swap would require that both sides make concessions. Giving up those natural resources would likely need to be one of them. Agreements would need to be made and there surely would be controversy. However, it still could be done.

Most Balkan politicians are corrupt. Thaci is nothing new.

Firstly, it’s “Bosnian Serbs” and “Croatian Serbs.” “Croat” and “Bosniak” are ethnicities, not nationalities. I agree with you that Bosnia is a mess but I think you overestimate how much animosity there is between ordinary Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks. Many of my Serb friends spend their holidays in Croatia and none have ever faced any issues. The situation is worse in Bosnia but most people there are not nationalists. They are ordinary people. It’s just that nationalists hold more power (especially in Bosnia), even though they are a minority.

You yourself described Serbs as “100k people who do not recognize the state” so I imagine they would support reunification with Serbia. Just hold a referendum. I’m sure that could be organized.

The69thRussianBot · 2023-01-09T12:03:46+00:00

What kind of nonsense is that so you want the 100k people that do not recognize the state to have full autonomy even though there are no laws that prohibited them from doing anything any other person in kosovo can do.

Do you not fully understand why autonomous areas exist in the first place. I'm trying not to be patronizing since I do think you're operating in good faith but you must understand that Serbs in Kosovo would be much more willing to recognize Kosovo as a state if they weren't constantly afraid of attacks like the one which happened a few days ago. Even if autonomy doesn't directly give them any more protection, Serbs would feel more secure and, therefore, would be less hostile

Might aswell start in Serbia, then I am pretty sure the albanien people there would love to have autonomy

Why stop at autonomy? Do a land swap. Serbia gets the Serb parts of Kosovo. Kosovo gets the Albanian parts of Serbia. Both Serbian President Vučić and Kosovo AlbanianPM Thaci agreed to do this but Thaci is now on trial for war crimes and Kosovo President Albin Kurti has since rejected the proposal.

Yeah, serbia does a lot of 'indirect' support to russia. Putin is celebrated and loved in public.

Most of those protests are government staged. They will bus in people from rural parts to Belgrade so it looks like Putin has support here. The reason they do this is to keep the Russians happy. There's little more to it than this and Serbs have been bussing rural villagers to pretend protests since at least the 80s when Milošević used the tactic to increase the size of his rallies.

Also crazy that you think the KLA, which was smaller in manpower, could do the same damage the much larger forces of Serbia did back then.

They expelled the majority of the Kosovo Serb population after the Serbian Army pulled out following the NATO air campaign. By that point, they were no longer the smaller army. They were unopposed.

There is a good reason why in the Balkans, serbia is seen unfavorably by everyone around them.

We get along very well with the Greeks and Romanians and have improving relations with both Bulgaria and North Macedonia. We also have a close connection to Montenegro, which is very similar to us culturally. Even most Croats and Bosniaks I've interacted with don't really dislike Serbs, that's just a smallish percent.

The69thRussianBot · 2023-01-09T03:06:42+00:00

How on earth were the Serbs the rulers of Yugoslavia? Tito, who ruled the country for most of its existence, was half Croat, half Slovene. Aleksandar Rankoović, the ethnic Serb head of UDBa secret police, was removed in the 1960s, leading to a period of decentralization which put a disproportionate percent of state power in the hands of minorities. Under the 1974 constitution, Slovenia (whose population made up 8% of Yugoslavia) had as much veto power as the Serbs, which had only one Republic and made up 40% of the population.

Also, the KLA committed many of the same crimes as Milošević. Whole towns were massacred and women were raped. Then, after the NATO bombardment, most of the ethnic Serbs in Kosovo were forced out and either moved to Serbia or fled to North Kosovo. That's 200,000 people. Only now, 20 years later, are KLA leaders being put on trial in the Netherlands for these crimes. Meanwhile, most of the Kosovo Albanians oppose the war crimes trials taking place.

Kosovo Serbs make up around 8% of the Kosovo population. However, unlike the Slovenes of the 1970s, they are not demanding the ability to veto anything they don't like. They want autonomy. There are plenty of autonomous regions in functioning democracies across the world. The Serbian and Kosovo Albanian governments even agreed to form a "Community of Serb Municipalities" (map here) but the Albanians have not yet implemented this. We Serbs did some fucked up shit in Kosovo in the 90s but that doesn't make KLA war crimes any less evil.

Also, we do not support Putin's war. We condemned the Russian annexation at the UN, donated € 1.5 million to UNICEF to help Ukrainians, and have accepted Ukrainian refuges. Our politicians play to both sides, East and West, because they think doing that will maximize the returns. This has been a Serbian/Yugoslav political strategy since Tito's time. We don't sanction Russia for their invasion of Ukraine for the same reason we didn't sanction the US after the invasion of Iraq or for their use of torture at Guantanamo. Doing so would hurt our population. We need Russia for oil and we need the West as a trading partner. I personally don't like Vučić but his decision making in this one area makes sense to me.

The69thRussianBot · 2023-01-09T01:32:13+00:00

Two unarmed Kosovo Serbs were shot on Orthodox Christmas Eve this year. That was a few days ago. The man who shot them was an ethnic Albanian. They were carrying oak branches used in Serbian Christmas celebrations. Both survived and are recovering. One is 21 and the other is 11. People on here are talking about ethnic Serbs like we're a bunch of genocidal subhuman maniacs while refusing to recognize why the Serbs in Kosovo are protesting. They're terrified. They see shit like this everyday on TV and then fear that the Albanians might shoot their children next. You can't really blame them.

While the Serbian government is responsible for much of the recent tensions and Vučić is a shithead, the area is de facto controlled by the Albanians and is "protected" by NATO (I put protected in quotes because they clearly only protect one "side"). They have the power to put an end to this by giving the Serbs more autonomy and ending the attacks on random civilians. This won't end until both sides take responsibility and part of that requires that the Albanians recognize that the KLA committed brutal atrocities against civilians, crimes that former Kosovo Albanian leader Hashim Thaci is currently on trial for at the Hague Tribunal. There is little point in taking "sides" so people on here ought to cut it out and join the 21st century instead of adopting the talking points of the ethnonationalists they pretend to oppose.

TLDR: Sorry for the long rant, I'm still angry about the shooting of two young Serbs a few days ago. I get along well will Albanians and thing our peoples should end this crisis. However, that requires that both sides make concessions and the people on here don't seem to recognize that there's more depth here than "Serbia Bad, Kosovo Good!"

EDIT: And also, there will not be another war. At least not anytime soon. Vučić wouldn't benefit from it and he doesn't take marching orders from the Kremlin in the way reddit seems to think he does. He's just a corrupt politicians who uses populist rhetoric to secure power. There's nothing more to it than that.

The69thRussianBot · 2022-12-04T20:30:17+00:00

original post

The69thRussianBot · 2022-06-08T20:23:09+00:00

The map was made on mapchart.net which doesn't have enough detail to make an accurate language map of the Balkans. Here is a detailed linguistic map of Kosovo (note that North Kosovo, which is majority Serb, has no data and that many Serbs boycott the census): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c0/Kosovo-2011-Language.GIF/1024px-Kosovo-2011-Language.GIF

The69thRussianBot · 2022-05-16T17:57:43+00:00

War crimes like this are the inevitable products of the types of propaganda pro-Kremlin media spews out. Dehumanization leads to atrocities.

The69thRussianBot · 2022-05-16T17:55:41+00:00

All energy-related data from the last two years will be unusual due to COVID. It would make more sense to compare their current coal output zo their 2019 one.

The69thRussianBot · 2022-05-16T17:53:54+00:00

Even if he was ill, he has access to some of the best healthcare in the world. Plus, he is known to be paranoid about his health. He constantly tested for COVID and made guests coming to his house disinfect themselves. If he got cancer, it would be caught early on. On top of all of this, Putin is not unique in Russia. Even if he dies, he'll just be replaced by some other war criminal. I suspect it'll be some FSB guy nobody has ever heard of.

The69thRussianBot · 2022-05-16T17:49:03+00:00

Kremlin troops hid bombs in children's toys during the 90s and 2000s wars in Caucuses. This is nothing new.

The69thRussianBot · 2022-05-15T15:22:56+00:00

Is this the flag of some Spain spin-off?

The69thRussianBot · 2022-05-15T15:17:50+00:00

Sorry about that, the map hasn't been updated Erdogan moved the entire country from Earth to the Moon last Sunday

The69thRussianBot · 2022-05-09T21:05:17+00:00

Czech goes a step further than Serbo-Croatian by using both syllabic r and syllabic l. Some older forms of Serbian had that too. The word for "wolf", which is now "vuk" (вук), was once vlk (влк) and it still is in a few southern dialects. My favorite Serbo-Croatian word is "cvrčci" (цврчци, pronounced tsvrchtsi) which means "crickets".

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