The National Co-ordinator for Cooperation with the UNESCO for Cultural Heritage Vladimir Džamić told RTS that the US decision to withdraw from UNESCO was not too surprising and that he does not expect other countries to follow their move.

Vladimir Džamić says that the US had a turbulent relationship with the UNESCO since 1974 when they protested over UNESCO's relations towards Israel, and then in 1984, when they left UNESCO, which lasted until 2001.

The State Department says the U.S. is pulling out of UNESCO because of what Washington sees as its anti-Israel bias and need for “fundamental reform” of the U.N. cultural agenc, reports AP.

In a statement, the State Department said it notified UNESCO director Irina Bokova on Thursday of the decision. The U.S. will seek to have a “permanent observer” status instead.

America and its NATO allies are preparing for a fierce anti-Russian media offensive in our country, writes the Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti.

The paper said it learned that a portion of the USD 250 million that the US Congress has allocated to the Countering Russian Influence Fund for fiscal years 2017 and 2018, will soon arrive in Serbia.

Following the announcement of internal dialogue on Kosovo, Albanian lobbyists are busily preparing a resolution for the UN in order to give Kosovo a chair.

According to Sputnik, lobbyists in America are working on the draft, helped by the Clinton Foundation, and their plan is for Kosovo to gain the status of “an observer state,” modeled after Palestine.

US State Department official Hoyt Bryan Yee thinks that "integration and transformation" of the Western Balkans is in the interests of Brussels, and the region.

Speaking in Bled, Slovenia, he added that the readiness for this on the part of EU institutions is what is currently missing.

Belgrade based daily Danas writes today, based on unofficial diplomatic sources, that the United States and Germany are considering who will be their envoys in the next phase of the Brussels dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina, and that it is expected that the decision on their names would be made and disclosed in a month time.

Presidents of Serbia and Kosovo, Aleksandar Vučić and Hashim Thaqi will meet in Brussels on Thursday at the EU headquarters in Brussels under the auspices of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security.

President of the Forum for Ethnic Relations, Dušan Janjić estimates for Danas that this will be "one of the preparatory meetings for a new phase of Brussels Dialogue, which will, possibly, be maintained in the future at a monthly level."

Political analyst and head of the Republic of Serbia Representative Office in Washington Obrad Kesić says, in an interview with today's Blic, that the Balkans are not only the subject of a political fight between the West and Russia, but are also currently the subject of internal struggle about the control over the US foreign policy.

Western intrusion into traditional Russian spheres of influence, areas under the sway of Moscow for three centuries or more, represents a highly provocative and destabilizing policy.

Note: this article is part of a symposium on U.S.-Russia relations included in the September/October 2017 issue of the National Interest.

The new US administration has not yet formulated a policy towards the Western Balkans, and the European Union is running out of “carrots” to motivate the Balkan countries in the implementation of reforms, and again European integration, with Russian obstructions, still remains the best way for the region – US analysts said on Monday on the panel “Western Balkans – Delicate Balance” at the Woodrow Wilson Center.