Russia’s representative in Monday’s UN Security Council meeting has said that Pristina is disregarding and trying to unilaterally change the agreement reached with Belgrade concerning the Association/Community of Serb Municipalities (ZSO), with the EU’s tacit approval.

Pristina has to implement the agreement on the Community of Serb Municipalities straight away and this will be a litmus test of its readiness to meet the obligations. Otherwise, we will see a deterioration of the situation in Kosovo and around it, the Russian representative said. UNSC Resolution 1244 has been and will be the only platform for resolving the situation in Kosovo, he underlined.

The statements that the mission should be downsized and its budget reduced have no grounds in the report of the UN secretary general who has said that much is yet to be done, the Russian representative said. He voiced the hope that the special court for war crimes of the Kosovo Liberation Army would start working as soon as possible, and would not repeat the failure of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

He said that Kosovo has become a shelter and transit center for radical Islamists who use the territory for recruitment and training, noting that, relative to its size, Kosovo has the highest number of fighters for the Islamic State.