Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić declared on Sunday that he would publicly present “evidence and witness accounts from the scene” of the attack on Kosovo Police in the northern Kosovo village of Banjska within “24 hours”.
In a video posted on Instagram, Vučić emphasized that Serbia would not rest until the truth about the Banjska incident, which resulted in the death of a Kosovo Police officer and at least three Serbian attackers on September 24, is revealed.
On Friday, Milan Radojičić took responsibility for the attack on Kosovo Police and resigned from his position as the deputy leader of the Serb List, the largest political party representing Serbs in Kosovo and supported by the Serbian Government.
Earlier, Vučić had expressed gratitude to Radojičić for “protecting Serbs in Kosovo” but later stated that he would be subject to questioning by the judiciary.
Serbia has consistently denied Kosovo’s allegations of involvement in the attack, which Kosovar authorities have officially classified as an act of terrorism.
Following the attack, Kosovo Police discovered and confiscated a significant cache of weapons in and around Banjska. U.S. Ambassador to Kosovo Jeffery Hovenier remarked to the BBC on Saturday that the quantity and quality of the weapons suggest that “ethnic Serbian attackers did not secure them themselves”.
On Sunday, Vučić made controversial remarks, suggesting that the response to the attack was based on ethnicity, drawing parallels to a separate incident in North Macedonia where eight police officers were killed.
He asserted that when an Albanian police officer, who was not supposed to be there, is killed, all Serbs up to the age of fourteen should be investigated, arrested, and killed.
On Saturday, Vučić clarified that he has “no intention of ordering the Serbian military to cross the Kosovo border” and that he intends to withdraw Serbian forces from the region. He refuted claims that Serbia is deploying its military along the border.
Vučić explained that they have reduced the number of personnel near the administrative line over time, from 14,000 to 7,500, with plans to further reduce it to 4,000, as reported by the Financial Times.
On Friday, the United States called on Serbia to withdraw its troops from the border, deeming their relocation a “highly destabilizing development”.
Additionally, on Saturday, the Government of Kosovo and the European Union urged Serbia to withdraw its troops from the border area.
The decision to relocate Serbian forces along the Kosovo border occurred approximately one week after the September 24 attack on Kosovo Police in Banjska, Zvecn, leading to the ongoing investigation and arrest of three suspected attackers who are currently in pretrial detention in Pristina.
