The Serbian President, Aleksandar Vučić, said late on Friday that Serbia “is not preparing for war” with Kosovo, after claims by the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, that the Serbian state sent its army “a few meters” close to the border with the neighboring country on Thursday.
“Serbia will not go to war, it will wait for the moment for its political action,” Vučić told Serbian television Prva on Friday.
On Thursday shortly before midnight, Kurti said that “specialized units of the Serbian army have been spotted just a few meters away from the border with Kosovo” and published, as he claimed, images of them.
Vučić said that those images “are from the ground security area”.
“Kurti wants something to happen for the US to intervene against Serbia,” Vučić said.
Kosovo and Serbia share a border line that is about 400 kilometers long.
Earlier in the day, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia, James O’Brien, said that the United States is monitoring the movements of the Serbian army near the border with Kosovo and that it has informed Serbia that the use of force will be unacceptable.
“In Serbia, the president [of Serbia, Aleksandar] Vučić knows very well that any use of force against Kosovo would be unacceptable, it would be considered endangering NATO forces, which are there to protect the population, Albanians and Serbs. He has said that there will be no use of force,” said O’Brien.
Meanwhile, NATO’s peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, KFOR, told to Radio Free Europe on Friday that the security situation in Kosovo is “calm but fragile,” and called on Kosovo and Serbia to refrain from escalating rhetoric and separator.
Vučić called a meeting of Serbia’s National Security for Saturday because of a major gun attack in the Russian capital, Moscow, earlier in the evening.
“There are several reasons for this,” Vučić told to TV Prva.
Vučić also said that in addition to “measures for the absolute protection of Serbia’s security, I will also propose some new laws”.
The hearing is scheduled to be held a day later, on March 23.
At least 40 people were killed and more than 100 wounded after gunmen opened fire on a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow, Russian authorities said.
According to them, gunmen opened fire at the Crocus City concert hall in Krasnogorsk, near Moscow, on Friday evening.
Successive explosions were also reported.
The spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, called on the international community to condemn, as she said, “this bloody terrorist attack”.
