Senior Foreign Ministry official and Balkans expert Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko has been appointed the new Russian ambassador to Serbia, Russian media reported quoting a decree by President Vladimir Putin.

Russian news agencies said that “President Putin relieved Alexander Chepurin of his duties as Ambassador to Serbia and appointed Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko to the post”. The decree was published on a government web site.

The UK, the US and Germany called on the UN Security Council during the Monday's meeting on Kosovo, to strategically revise the UNMIK mission, praising it for the job done so far, while Russia demanded an apology from Pristina for the treatment of its UN member, the FoNet news agency reported on Monday.

The US representative said Washington was concerned about the tensions between Pristina and Belgrade, adding both sides should go back to the dialogue on normalisation of relations.

Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in St Petersburg about the situation in Kosovo, prior to the June 10 session of the UN Security Council.

Dacic told reporters in St. Petersburg, where he is taking part in the International Economic Forum, that he introduced in detail the plan of Serbia on the issue of Kosovo to Lavrov, and that the head of Russian diplomacy told him that Moscow absolutely supported Serbia and that the support would be clearly expressed and at a session of the UN Security Council on Monday.

Ambassador of Russia to Belgrade Alexander Chepurin met yesterday the head of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) Zahir Tanin. Chepurin told Tanin that Russia counts that the UN will take all measures to investigate the recent attack on a Russian citizen, UNMIK's official Mikhail Krasnoshchekov, reported Belgrade based daily Blic, quoting Chepurin's post on Twitter.

Vyacheslav Volodin, the Speaker of the Russian Duma, lower house of the Federal Assembly, said in Belgrade on Monday that the “intrusion” of Kosovo’s special forces into the north aimed at frightening the Serbs, establishing control there by force, adding the Serbs could count on Russian help in future, N1 reported.

Volodin said that the UN Security Council Resolution 1244 (on Kosovo after the 1989-1999 war there) should be respected.

Konstantin Kosachov has assessed as “really dangerous” the situation in which “Pristina’s authorities deteriorate relations with neighbours,” Tanjug news agency reported.

President of the Russian Federation Council Committee for International Affairs, Kosachov noted Russia could provide help to Serbia in ensuring the security, if it gets Belgrade’s request.

The Russian Investigative Committee has launched a pre-investigation probe into the attack on Russian UN employee Mikhail Krasnoshchekov in Kosovo, the press service of the committee told TASS agency, Serbian media report.

"The main office of the Russian Investigative Committee has launched a probe into the incident that happened with the Russian national Mikhail Krasnoshchekov, an employee of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK)," the press service said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Slovenia today the crisis in Kosovo and Metohija was caused by the West's leniency towards Pristina.

According to Sputnik, in conversation with his Slovenian counterpart, Lavrov said that the crisis was caused by those who want to build "a sanitary cordon toward Russia out of the territory of the Balkans" (for the sake of incorporating it all into NATO).

According to him, the fact that Pristina does is not implementing agreements that have been reached earlier shows that the EU is helpless.

When it comes to Kosovo we are all lost in space and time, Europe is asking for a delay of the solution, the Serbian public does not want to accept any solution, and Kosovo public does not want to accept that Kosovo cannot be a state without Serbia – the Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic said at an international conference in Belgrade yesterday.