• Biden: Kosovo-Serbia dialogue must conclude in mutual recognition (media)
• Albin Kurti most preferred politician, survey shows (Klan Kosova)
• Gervalla: Serbian elections won’t be automatically held in Kosovo (media)
• Concern over ‘uncontrolled’ security cameras in Serb-dominated north (BIRN)
• Kosovo mayors’ promises multiplied in last elections (BIRN)
• How the Kosovo air war foreshadowed the crisis in Ukraine (The New Yorker)
• Former secretary of Ministry of Trade caught with 50 kg of drugs (Kallxo)
• COVID-19: 373 new cases, two deaths (media)
• French ‘humanitarian’ far-right claims Kosovo as cautionary tale (BIRN)

Biden: Kosovo-Serbia dialogue must conclude in mutual recognition (media)

The United States will be Kosovo’s “steadfast partner”, wrote President Joe Biden in a letter addressed to his counterpart in Prishtina, Vjosa Osmani.

Biden said Washington continues to support talks between the two states, adding that the dialogue must conclude with reciprocal recognition.

“We are glad that Kosovo is continuing to build and strengthen its positive relations with neighboring countries, and we will continue to support your efforts towards a comprehensive normalization agreement with Serbia centered on mutual recognition”, wrote US President Biden.

Biden commended Kosovo’s progress in the past 14 years, as well as for its progress from a fragile democracy into “a nation ready to share its experiences with the world”.

Read full letter here: https://president-ksgov.net/en/news/biden-to-osmani-this-past-year-kosovo-repeatedly-demonstrated-leadership-on-the-international-stage

Albin Kurti most preferred politician, survey shows (Klan Kosova)

Klan Kosova published on Tuesday a survey conducted by PIPOS, according to which Prime Minister and Vetevendosje leader Albin Kurti is the most preferred politician with 28.9 percent. Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) leader Lumir Abdixhiku ranks second with 18.6 percent, followed by PDK leader Memli Krasniqi with 13.3 percent. 7.3 percent of respondents said President Vjosa Osmani is their preferred politician, while AAK leader Ramush Haradinaj is preferred by 6.2 percent of the respondents.

The survey also showed that if parliamentary elections were held now, Vetevendosje would win with 34.7 percent, LDK would rank second with 24.10 percent, followed by the PDK 21.3 percent and AAK with 7.7 percent.

Gervalla: Serbian elections won’t be automatically held in Kosovo (media)

The Kosovo Government is determined not to allow Serbian elections to be held in Kosovo. Kosovo’s Foreign Minister Donika Gervalla said on Tuesday that it has been made clear to internationals too the Serbian elections scheduled for April will not be held in Kosovo as has happened before. “The April elections, with the automatism they were held before, will not be held. We don’t know what the future will bring, and we don’t know what the requests will be, but the automatism that they were held before and that they should be held now too, will not be valid. We have made this clear to internationals too,” Gervalla said in an interview with ATV.

Concern over ‘uncontrolled’ security cameras in Serb-dominated north (BIRN)

BIRN has identified a number of security cameras directed towards public areas in Serb-majority northern Kosovo and that are not under the control of the Kosovo police.

There are two close to the bus station in North Mitrovica, several in Zvecan and others in a village of Zubin Potok.

But while, by law, security cameras directed at public streets should be the sole responsibility of Kosovo’s police force, dozens observed by BIRN in three Serb-majority municipalities in the country’s north are not apparently under anyone’s control.

The Kosovo police say that, in the north, they operate only the security cameras on the main bridge in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica, a frequent flashpoint since Kosovo’s 1998-99 war.

But as for the others, municipal authorities in Zubin Potok, Zvecan and North Mitrovica – who answer more to Belgrade than they do Pristina – say they have no control.

According to the Kosovo Information and Privacy Agency, AIP, only the Kosovo police “has legal authorisation to install security cameras that conduct preventive surveillance of public order.”

“If they are installed by the municipalities, the surveillance and their control should be given to the Kosovo Police,” AIP told BIRN.

AIP says it is working with police to make sure public security cameras across Kosovo are brought under police control, citing the example of cameras in western Peja/Pec municipality that were previously managed by the municipality.

But this is not the case in the north, where ethnic Serbs, backed by Serbia, have resisted integration with the rest of majority-Albanian Kosovo.

According to Besim Hoti, police deputy director for the north, many of the cameras identified by BIRN in the north are not functioning, while others are controlled either by municipal authorities or by public enterprises.

In Zvecan, a security guard at the municipality – who did not give his name – told BIRN that the feed from the security cameras had recently been moved to the North Mitrovica municipality, widely seen as the base of Serbian so-called ‘parallel structures’ still operating in the north more than two decades since the war and 14 years since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia.

Zvecan mayor Dragisa Milovic said the only camera operated by the municipality films “movement within the building of the municipality” and that any others filming the streets are not under municipality control.

North Mitrovica deputy mayor Adrijana Hodzic said she was unaware “who installed the camera or who supervises these devices.”

Asked whether his municipality is responsible for the cameras, Zubin Potok mayor Srdjan Vulovic told BIRN: “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure.”

Kosovo mayors’ promises multiplied in last elections (BIRN)

Kosovo mayors made more than 1,800 promises during the 2021 local election campaign, according to the think tank GAP Institute – far more than in the previous elections.

More than 1,800 promises made by current mayors during last year’s local election campaign have been identified by the Prishtina-based think tank GAP.

According to the findings, presented on Tuesday, the Mayor of Pristina, Përparim Rama, made the most promises, with 206, followed by the Mayor of South Mitrovica, Bedri Hamza, with 123, and the mayor of Gjilan, Alban Hyseni, with 109.

The fewest promises were made by the Mayor of Peja, Gazmend Muhaxheri, with 25, the Mayor of Deçan, Bashkim Ramosaj, with 20, and the Mayor of Viti, Sokol Haliti, with 19.

In the 27 municipalities of Kosovo, GAP identified and confirmed a total of 1,819 such promises, excluding the Serb-majority municipalities in which no active campaign was conducted.

The figure was double the number in the last mandate, when elected mayors made 913 promises in their campaigns of which, by September 2021, only 467 were fully implemented while the rest were implemented partially or not implemented at all, according to GAP findings.

The promises appeared in televised debates, in activities during the election campaign, and in election programs.

Bekim Salihu, from GAP, said that they had listed the promises made by candidates for mayors since 2019.

He also said the approach in the next elections should be changed because only 11 candidates were women, and only two managed to become mayors out of 38 elected mayors.

“We hope and demand that in the next elections this percentage will change and that the representation of women will be much more significant,” Salihu said.

Most promises related to the public services, with a total of 381, and to education, with 270. Some 200 related to culture and 199 to infrastructure. Some 175 concerned economics, 134 health and agriculture 157. Least promises concerned urbanism – 41 in 27 municipalities.

Eight municipalities were won by the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, and the Democratic Party of Kosovo PDP; five by the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK; four by Lëvizja Vetëvendosje, ten by Serbian List, one by Civic Initiative, the Social Democratic Initiative and the Kosovo Turkish community.

Changes of government took place in 12 municipalities: Prishtina, Shtime, Gjilan, Kamenica, Mitrovica South, Prizren, Hani i Elezit, Vushtrri, Dragash, Junik, Mamusha and Skenderaj.

In 11 other municipalities there was a change of the mayor, with the same party as in the previous election. Fifteen mayors secured extensions of their mandates for 2021-2025.

Elections took place on October 17, 2021. On November 14, a second round was held in 21 municipalities that went to the runoff.

How the Kosovo air war foreshadowed the crisis in Ukraine (The New Yorker)

Twenty-three years later, Kremlin propagandists still use the NATO bombing campaign to justify their own actions.

For weeks, people in Ukraine, and some people in Russia, have been stuck in the purgatory of doublethink. On the one hand, the media—Western media in particular—bring daily bulletins of the buildup of Russian troops near the borders of Ukraine, and of intelligence warnings that a large-scale invasion is a real threat, and possibly imminent. Western embassies evacuated diplomats’ families from Kyiv. Then they evacuated nonessential personnel. Then, over the weekend, the United States pulled its military trainers from Ukraine and directed U.S. citizens to leave the country; on Monday, it moved its embassy operations from Kyiv to Lviv. The Dutch airline KLM discontinued flights to Kyiv. On the other hand, the big war (as opposed to the shooting war in the east, which has continued to claim near-daily casualties for eight years) is unimaginable. Both the Ukrainian and Russian governments keep downplaying the probability of war and reprimanding journalists for fanning the fear. A prominent Ukrainian think tank run by the former Defense Minister has issued two reports, three weeks apart, arguing that a successful large-scale Russian invasion is not yet feasible. Everyone understands that the war would be both bloody and senseless—surely Russia doesn’t really want to occupy one of the poorest countries in Europe, inhabited by forty-four million people, most of whom have come to hate Russia. And in peacetime—even in fragile, relative peacetime—it’s always hard to imagine war.

In late January, I spent time in Ukraine with, among others, Nataliya Gumenyuk and Pyotr Ruzavin, a married couple. Gumenyuk is a leading Ukrainian journalist; Ruzavin is a Russian investigative journalist. One evening over dinner, Gumenyuk said, “It’s impossible to imagine air raids in Kyiv.” Before I could catch myself, I blurted out, “Like it was once impossible to imagine air raids of Belgrade.” I was referring to the nato bombing campaign of Yugoslavia, which I covered on the ground; I was in Belgrade when the first bomb fell on the city and the unimaginable became real. Ruzavin was in grade school at the time, but he understood. “And that’s what they keep coming back to,” he said, meaning that, almost twenty-three years later, Kremlin propagandists still use the 1999 air war as a point of comparison and justification.

Read full article here: https://bit.ly/3oUqvJE

Former secretary of Ministry of Trade caught with 50 kg of drugs (Kallxo)

Montenegrin media reported on Tuesday that Burim Rreci, a former secretary of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, was arrested at a border crossing point between Croatia and Montenegro after 50 kilograms of marijuana were found in his vehicle. Kallxo contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora for comment but they did not reply.

COVID-19: 373 new cases, two deaths (media)

373 new cases with COVID-19 and two deaths from the virus were recorded in the last 24 hours in Kosovo.

There are 9,461 active cases with COVID-19 in Kosovo.

French ‘humanitarian’ far-right claims Kosovo as cautionary tale (BIRN)

Figures on the French far-right and groups such as Solidarité Kosovo are pushing a revisionist version of what went on in Kosovo to further an anti-immigration agenda, and it’s become part of France’s presidential election.

In mid-June last year, three vans rolled into the village of Pones/Ponesh in eastern Kosovo, loaded with school supplies, clothes and shoes for local Serb children.

The humanitarian convoy was one of dozens organised by the French NGO Solidarité Kosovo over the past roughly 15 years, bringing aid collected in France to the ethnic Serb minority in Kosovo, a majority-Albanian former province of Serbia independent since 2008.

The intention appears noble. But Solidarité’s humanitarianism only travels so far.

Its roots, in fact, lie in the French far-right, a movement that has seized on the case of Kosovo – where many Albanians identify as Muslim – as a propaganda tool to rally opinion against multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.

Today, Solidarité counts connections spanning from the global far-right youth movement Generation Identity to the anti-immigration National Rally party of French presidential contender Marine Le Pen, and all the way to the corridors of the Serbian foreign ministry.

Indeed, its founder, a naturalised Serbian citizen and convert to Orthodox Christianity called Arnaud Gouillon, now heads the foreign ministry’s directorate for cooperation with Serbs outside Serbia, a body that has paid out roughly 40,000 euros to Serbian associations in France over the past three years. The payouts to two such groups – the ‘Union of Serbs of France’ and ‘All Serbs in Paris’ – have grown since Gouillon took over in late 2020, from 1.5 million dinars [12,700 euros] in 2019 and 2020 to 2.4 million dinars [20,400 euros] in 2021.

Read full article here: https://bit.ly/3JxrRBI