US lawmaker Ritchie Torres criticized Biden administration’s stance towards Kosovo.
In a video message, the Democrat lawmaker from New York, who is also co-chair of the Albanian Issues Caucus in Congress, says that if the battle between democracy and autocracy is the main challenge of the 21st century, then the US is making the wrong judgment about democratic Kosovo by making concessions to Serbia, a country becoming increasingly autocratic.
“In the span of 16 years, Kosovo has become the most democratic country in the Western Balkans. When the US needed countries to accept Afghan refugees after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Kosovo was among the first to do so. Kosovo is an unwavering ally of the US, while Serbia has long been a satellite in Russia’s and China’s orbit. Serbia has refused to impose sanctions for Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s war crimes against Ukrainian civilians,” Torres said in the video message.
“Serbia has imported weapon systems from Russia in violation of US laws, and there is even a poll revealing that Vladimir Putin is the most popular foreign leader in Serbia, despite his war crimes. Given these facts, one wonders why the US insists on making concessions to a Russian satellite state at the expense of a stable democratic ally like Kosovo? It is time for the U.S. to place its support where our values lie, behind true democracies like Kosovo, which has earned the right to global recognition and integration as an independent state,” Torres added further.
“The US should no longer be deceived by the Serbian regime playing both sides. A diplomat once said one cannot sit in two chairs at the same time, especially when those two chairs are the US and Russia, democracy and autocracy, which are far apart from each other. The US must unequivocally stand with the countries to which it has exported democracy,” concluded the democrat lawmaker.
