by tyler | May 31, 2023 | CNN, europe
Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti told CNN on Tuesday that he would not surrender the country to what he described as a Serbian “fascist militia,” following violent protests in its north over the installation of ethnically Albanian mayors in a disputed election.
Dozens of NATO peacekeepers were injured on Monday after clashes erupted with Serbian demonstrators trying to block the newly elected mayors from taking office in the northern municipality of Zvecan.
NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) said Tuesday that it will deploy additional forces to the region following the clashes, which saw some of its peacekeepers wounded by batons, firearms and Molotov cocktails. Demonstrators again gathered on Wednesday, assembling outside municipal buildings in Zvecan, according to Serbian state media.
“We are not facing peaceful protesters, we are facing a mob of extremists,” Kurti told CNN. “This is a fascist militia who attacked our policemen and NATO soldiers – and journalists who were on the ground reporting.”
However, Kurti’s government was criticized by the United States and others for “escalating” the conflict.
“The Government of Kosovo’s decision to force access to municipal buildings sharply and unnecessarily escalated tensions,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Tuesday.
“Prime Minister Kurti and his government should ensure that elected mayors carry out their transitional duties from alternate locations outside municipal buildings, and withdraw police forces from the vicinity,” Blinken said.
Following Blinken’s statement, the US announced a raft of measures against Kosovo for the “unnecessary” crisis, including canceling its participation in US-led joint NATO exercises.
French President Emmanuel Macron also said Wednesday that authorities in Kosovo are responsible for the rising tensions in the northern region.
“We made it clear to the Kosovo authorities that it was a mistake to proceed with these elections in this context of virtual non-participation,” Macron said at a joint press conference in Slovakia on Wednesday, referring to the Serbian boycott of the vote.
When asked by CNN’s Isa Soares if he would heed calls to withdraw Kosovar police from the northern municipalities, Kurti said: “As long as there is a violent mob outside of the building, I cannot have only (a) few policemen. I need to have police who will keep the order, peace and security.”
“All international bodies did recognize the elections that we had. Once you recognize the process of elections, and its results, then mayors have to go to the municipalities. Who else should be in these municipality buildings if not the mayors?” he added.
Monday’s violence erupted after tensions bubbled for months in northern Kosovo over controversial local elections.
On November 5, four mayors belonging to the Serbian List party collectively resigned, Kurti told CNN.
They resigned partly in protest against the issue of car license plates. Kosovo has for years wanted Serbs living in the north to switch their Serbian license plates to those issued by Pristina, Kosovo’s capital.
In July, Kosovo’s government announced a two-month window in which plates had to be changed, but pushed the date back after protests. When the new date came around in November, four ethnic Serb mayors resigned, along with local judges and some 600 police officers, according to Reuters.
After this, Kurti said that the elections had to be postponed again – this time to April.
However, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic called on Serbs in the region to boycott the elections, saying that they should no longer tolerate a foreign “occupation.” Serbian List supported the boycott, leaving ethnically Albanian candidates to run unchallenged.
After polls closed, election officials said only around 1,567 people had voted across the four Serb majority municipalities – a turnout of just 3.5% according to local media. In Zvecan, the site of Monday’s violence, the Albanian mayor won the election by barely more than 100 votes, prompting cries that his authority is illegitimate.
“The turnout was quite low because of the pressure, blackmail and threats from Belgrade to all Serbian citizens – and in particular those who were planning to run,” Kurti told CNN.
“Now we have four mayors whose legitimacy is low. But, nonetheless, there is no one who is more legitimate than them. We have to have the rule of law. We are a democratic republic,” he added.
Meliza Haradinaj, Kosovo’s former foreign affairs minister, told CNN that “the elections were evaluated as fair and democratic afterward by all Quint countries,” referring to the informal decision making group comprising the US, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy.
“Now that the newly democratically elected mayors (ethnic Albanians) want to commence work in their municipal offices, the world has witnessed violent Serb gangs forcibly preventing democracy from happening,” Haradinaj said.
But many ethnic Serbs in the region feel underrepresented. The majority of Kosovo’s Serbs live in the northern regions and have increasingly demanded greater autonomy from the ethnic Albanian majority.
Kurti’s government has been accused of preventing the implementation of self-governing municipalities for Serbs, provided for under the terms of the 2013 Brussels Agreement brokered by the European Union and aimed at normalizing relations between the Balkan neighbors.
Under the agreement, Serbia could create “autonomous municipalities” in northern Kosovo, but these would have to operate under the Kosovar legal system, with Kosovar police remaining the only law enforcement authority.
More than a decade on, these municipalities have not been created, leaving disputes over the degree of autonomy for Kosovo’s Serbs to fester.
“We have a Serbian community in Kosovo which is 4% of the population. 93% are Albanian. And the rest, 3%, are other minorities: Roma, Bosniaks, Turks, Egyptians, Gorani. We want to live in a multicultural society,” Kurti told CNN.
“But we cannot have a privileged minority because Belgrade is lamenting for the loss of Kosovo in 1999 when NATO intervened to stop the genocide of the regime of (Slobodan) Milosevic,” he added.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 following the 1998-99 war in which Kosovar Albanians attempted to split from what was then Yugoslavia, made up of today’s Serbia and Montenegro. NATO intervened to protect Kosovo’s Albanian majority from a campaign of ethnic cleansing orchestrated by Milosevic, including by conducting an aerial bombing campaign across Yugoslavia.
“Kosovo is a success story of NATO intervention – that is what bothers both Belgrade and the Kremlin,” Kurti told CNN.
Kurti drew stark contrasts between Kosovo and neighboring Serbia, claiming: “We are a democratic, pro-European republic. Our northern neighbor, Serbia, is a pro-Russian autocracy. So there is not much democracy there, even though they have elections – since they have one party, one state, one leader.”
He also claimed that many of the “ultra-nationalist right-wingers” who protested in Kosovo on Monday “are being paid and ordered from Belgrade and who admire despotic President Putin.”
“The situation is clear: Serbia does not want peace, because it suits to keep tensions in Kosovo north so the West diverts its attention away from Ukraine,” Haradinaj told CNN. “This is Putin’s playbook – mounting Balkans as the next leg of the Ukraine war.”
Some fear that Vucic, who remains embroiled in political turmoil at home, is also attempting to use Serbian nationalism as a rallying cry for his supporters.
In comments on Tuesday, Vucic claimed that the violence in Kosovo may pose a threat to ethnic Serbs in the region, saying Serbia has “concern for the survival and security of Serbs in Kosovo.”
“Kosovo is helping him,” Bosko Jaksic, a foreign policy commentator in Belgrade, told CNN.
“He’s building his patriotic stature on Kosovo. He’s a big defender of the Serbian cause. He’s the savior of the Serbian people… All that rhetoric that we’ve heard a number of times before is being used again. And there are a lot of people who are buying it.”
Demonstrators gathered again in Zvecan on Wednesday, with employees of the local government, who used to work for the former ethnically Serbian mayor, assembling outside municipal buildings, according to Serbian state media RTS.
Protesters also carried a 250-meter-long (820-foot) Serbian flag through the streets of Zvecan, and draped more flags over barriers and anti-riot fences put up by KFOR troops.
by tyler | May 31, 2023 | CNN, europe
Russia saw the effects of its war on Ukraine dramatically reverberate back onto its own territory on Wednesday, after a “massive” shelling attack injured four people in Belgorod and preliminary information indicated a drone crashed and sparked a fire at an oil refinery further south.
Eight apartment buildings, four homes, a school and two administrative buildings were damaged during the shelling in Shebekino, a village in the border region of Belgorod, its governor said, as the oblast increasingly becomes a hotbed of straying violence.
Earlier on Tuesday night, Gladkov said one person was killed and two were injured in an attack on a temporary accommodation center.
And a drone crashed at the Ilsky oil refinery in the Krasnodar region, east of the annexed territory of Crimea, starting a fire in the early hours of Wednesday morning, local officials there said. The blaze was put out soon after.
The incidents come one day after a drone attack on Moscow, for which Russia has blamed Ukraine. All eight aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles launched at the Russian capital were destroyed, the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
Kyiv has not yet commented on the drone attack or on Wednesday’s incidents in Belgorod and Krasnodar. The Ukrainian government generally does not confirm or deny strikes inside Russian territory.
Elsewhere on Wednesday, a drone attack was launched on Russia’s Bryansk region, state news agency RIA Novosti reported. About 10 drones tried to attack the Klimovsky district and were shot down or intercepted, RIA reported citing emergency services.
The string of events – following last week’s incursion on Belgorod by anti-Putin Russians who had been fighting alongside the Ukrainian military – mark a new turn in a conflict that is increasingly coming home to Russian people, 15 months after Moscow launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Strikes have separately hit Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine on Wednesday. Five people were killed and 19 injured in Ukrainian shelling of the village of Karpaty, in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Luhansk, the acting head of the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic said on Telegram.
And a senior Russian-appointed official in Zaporizhzhia said there has been a series of explosions in Polohy, a Russian-held town close to the frontlines that many observers expect to be targeted in an anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive. Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Russian-formed council of the civil-military administration of Zaporizhzhia, said on Telegram: “It’s loud in Polohy. A series of explosions is heard in town.”
Ukraine has denied involvement in Tuesday’s attack in Moscow, even as one top official made it clear that Russia was getting a taste of its own medicine after months of bombarding Ukrainian cities.
“Of course, we enjoy watching and predicting an increase in attacks,” said Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak. “But of course, we have nothing to do directly with it.”
Russian officials reacted on Wednesday with a predictable array of anger. Taking about the situation in Belgorod, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told CNN in a regular call with journalists on Wednesday: “We are indeed concerned about this situation, shelling of civilian objects continues there.”
“In this case, too, by the way, we have not heard a single word of condemnation from anyone from the collective West, so far,” Peskov said. “The situation is rather alarming. Measures are being taken.”
“I woke up from explosions and the sound of shattering glass,” a woman in Belgorod told Russian news outlet Izvestia. “My husband and I jumped up immediately and ran to the bathroom … and now we’re wandering. The city center is all scattered.”
White House National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby told CNN Wednesday that the US is uncertain about who coordinated the drone incursions. “We’re still trying to get information here and develop some sort of sense of what happened… but I can’t tell you that we have any definitive information at this point.”
Kirby added that the Biden administration has “been clear, privately and publicly, with the Ukrainians that we don’t support attacks on Russian soil.”
On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukraine for the drone attack in the Moscow region, calling it a “clear sign of terrorist activity.” Putin claimed that “Kyiv chose the path of intimidation of Russian citizens and attacks on residential buildings.”
Putin said Tuesday the city’s air defenses worked normally but there was still “work to be done to make it better.” Asked to clarify the Russian president’s remarks, Peskov said: “The system worked effectively, but there is room for improvement. Work will continue to improve the air defense system.”
The Freedom for Russia Legion, a group that claimed responsibility for last week’s raid in Belgorod, posted an “additional” recruitment drive for drone pilots on its Telegram channel following a drone attack on Moscow on Tuesday. The legion, made up of Russian citizens who are fighting in Ukraine against their motherland, joked: “Graduates of the course will have the opportunity to practice their skills.”
But early signals from the West indicated that it had little patience for the Kremlin’s efforts to frame the narrative.
“The ‘Russia is the victim’ argument is so tired and so ridiculous that even the Russian people must see it for what it is – an overused and desperate retort by the Kremlin to try and explain its litany of strategic mistakes that have decimated Russia’s once proud global reputation,” UK military adviser Ian Stubbs said during a Wednesday speech in Vienna.
The incidents come as Ukraine prepares a much-anticipated counter-offensive against Russian forces, and follows days of missile bombardments on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities by Moscow.
On Monday Russia appeared to change its tactics by striking Kyiv with rockets and missiles during the day, hours after a separate wave of strikes overnight.
by tyler | May 31, 2023 | CNN, europe
All 21 passengers on a charter boat that sank in Italy’s Lake Maggiore on Sunday, killing four people, were currently or formerly tied to Israeli and Italian defense and intelligence work, officials said.
The 16-meter (52-foot) houseboat had been carrying 23 people at overcapacity when an apparent waterspout struck nearby, causing it to capsize on Sunday evening, CNN affiliate Sky Tg24 reported.
Some of the party managed to swim ashore and others were rescued by nearby boats, according Sky Tg24, adding that, although five were taken to the hospital, none of the survivors sustained any serious injuries.
There were 13 Israeli and 8 Italian passengers on board at the time the boat sank, while the victims were two men and two women. The Italian victims were named as Tiziana Barnobi, 53, and Claudio Alonzi, 62, a delegate of the country’s secret service confirmed, while a spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry identified the Israeli victim as Erez Shimoni, 60.
The boat’s captain, whose Russian partner Anna Bozhkova, 50, also died in the incident, is under investigation over the deaths, according to the Italian prosecutor.
Divers and a helicopter were also used as part of the search and rescue operation, the local fire service said. Authorities are trying to lift the boat from the lake after two failed attempts.
Italy’s military police, the Carabinieri, are assisting with the investigation, the prosecutor’s office told CNN.
“The prosecutor’s office is not investigating the nature of the passengers on the boat, only the captain’s role in the accident,” the prosecutor’s office confirmed.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said on Wednesday that Israel’s security forces lost a “dear friend” in the fatal boat accident. The body of Shimoni, who was a retired employee of the security forces, has been returned to Israel.
Shimoni had missed a flight on Sunday, along with another Israeli national, Israeli media reported, and the two were not expected to be on the boat, according to the local Italian prosecutor.
A delegate of the Italian secret service issued a public condolence “sharing closeness and pain for the tragic event to the families of the victims.”
Lake Maggiore is a popular destination for tourists and is shared by Italy and Switzerland.
The boat, named “The Gooduria,” had advertised as a charter vessel for €2,000 ($2,130) a day. Passengers had been reportedly celebrating a birthday party when the boat, traveling between the Italian towns of Lisanza and Dormelletto, capsized, according to Sky Tg24.
by tyler | May 30, 2023 | CNN, europe
The loud engine announces the approach of the Soviet-era armored BTR vehicle long before it appears – racing through a grassy plain on the outskirts of Chernihiv in northern Ukraine. Suddenly it stops, its door opens and Ukrainian soldiers rush out, storming the trench below.
“Today our task is training and cleaning the trenches,” a Ukrainian soldier with the call-sign Jenia says. He is a member of Kyiv’s Offensive Guard, which is part of an initiative by the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs to establish new assault brigades.
“The enemy has lost positions, we quickly arrive, take positions, and restore it,” he adds.
This operation is just a drill, but the scenario has been engineered to be as realistic as possible. The trenches are muddy – despite weeks without rain – and the soldiers are forced to face the unexpected, such as tending to and evacuating the wounded, or adapting after suffering casualties.
“Some people say training is not hard, that there is no danger – but running through the trenches and constantly training, knowing that you will go to battle, it is not easy,” Jenia says. “Everything comes with practice, It is clear that during the hostilities there will also be the psychological impact of war – but practice is very important.”
Even as Ukrainian cities experience barrage after barrage of Russian missile and drone strikes, Jenia and the other members of the Offensive Guard have remained unfazed, simulating scenarios they expect to find once Kyiv finally launches its much anticipated counteroffensive.
That day is fast approaching, if one of the top advisers to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is to be believed.
“There is already some sort of work underway to increase the intensity of the shelling of Russia’s logistics support in order to reduce their combat capabilities in the near future, to loosen up their defenses,” presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak told CNN in an interview.
The strikes Podolyak mentions are often referred to as shaping operations – so-called because they aim to ‘shape’ the battlefield – in this case, in Ukraine’s favor. CNN has previously reported that these began on May 12, citing a senior US military official and senior Western official.
“Everything that is happening now is a precursor to a counterattack, a necessary pre-condition,” Podolyak explained. “When the intensity of fire increases, especially on the logistics supplies, when the number of operations increases.”
Ukraine has increased the number of strikes on Russian ammunition depots, logistical nodes and rear echelon bases, such as the ones seen in Mariupol and Berdyansk in the past few days. The military’s top general, Commander-in-Chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, released a slickly produced video over the weekend with the caption: “The time has come to take back what belongs to us.”
In his nightly address Monday, President Zelensky said the timing of the counteroffensive had been set, but did not provide further details. And despite the clear signs that a counteroffensive is coming, Podolyak also refuses to commit to specific dates.
“You can’t say about a counterattack that it will start any one day, one time when some events will start,” he says. “Already now there are intensive relatively offensive actions on the flanks of the town of Bakhmut. There is essentially no city left, but offensives are underway.”
These smaller operations are but a sample of the larger offensive, whose ambitious goals Ukraine is very open about and has openly advertized. But for it to succeed, Kyiv needs continued Western support.
“If there are timely deliveries of large quantities of the necessary consumable components, I am talking about shells, drones and missiles, then of course the war can mathematically be over this year,” Polodyak says. “But it will end undoubtedly on the borders of Ukraine as they were in 1991, with the de-occupation of Crimea, and undoubtedly with the beginning of a massive process of transformation of Russia’s political system.”
“There will be a counteroffensive in any case, and it will be successful. It will not be quick, it will take some time, it will be complicated, but it will be successful nevertheless,” he added.
These bold goals are why Kyiv has delayed an attack that was initially expected in early in spring but has yet to materialize with summer around the corner, taking time to perfect the strategy.
“It is impossible to be perfectly prepared for such a large volume of combat. There will always have to be fine-tuning,” Podolyak explains. “These or other initiative events along the front lines go on, we will continue to accumulate resources, we will continue to conduct combat cohesion, we will continue to train and practice our troops, including the partners conducting training.”
Back on the training grounds, the Offensive Guard’s commander, call sign Kyiv, shares a similar combat philosophy.
“We improve our fighting skills in special combat training every day to liberate our lands,” he says. “Our servicemen now know how to deal with the enemy – because we practice everything until it becomes automatic.”
He’s been helping train tens of thousands of troops and believes Ukraine has what it takes to succeed.
“We have motivation,” he says. “We defend our lands, this is our country, this is our home.”
“Of course victory will be ours,” he adds.
by tyler | May 30, 2023 | CNN, europe
A mysterious patch of fluorescent green water that appeared in Venice’s famed Grand Canal Sunday was caused by a chemical commonly used in underwater construction to help identify leaks, environmental authorities say.
The chemical – fluorescein – is non-toxic. It remains unclear how the substance ended up in the canal, but the Regional Agency for the Environment in Venice (ARPAV) said given the volume released it was unlikely to be an accident.
The verdant blob was first noticed by residents near the Rialto Bridge on Sunday morning local time and grew slowly through the day.
Images showed gondolas, water taxis and water bus boats skimming through the emerald substance.
No group has claimed responsibility for the act and local police are investigating a number of leads, including environmental activism, a spokesperson for the Venice Police told CNN.
Further test results are expected later this week, which could help identify the exact quantity of the substance in the water.
Luca Zaia, the president of the region of Venice, warned that environmental activists may carry out copycat acts.
Further test results are expected later this week, which could help identify the exact quantity of the substance in the water.
The curious coloring came as the city celebrated the Vogalonga boat event, created to combat wave motion and to restore Venetian traditions and help spread attention for the environment and nature as well as the architecture Biennale, which opened last weekend.
This is not the first time Venice’s Grand Canal has changed color.
In 1968 Argentine artist Nicolás García Uriburu dyed the waters of the canal green with a fluorescent dye called Fluorescein, during the annual Venice Biennale. The move was designed to bring attention to ecological issues and the relationship between nature and civilization.
by tyler | May 30, 2023 | CNN, europe
At least 34 soldiers of NATO’s peacekeeping mission in Kosovo were injured during clashes with protesters in the northern part of the country Monday, according to the Italian defense ministry.
Tensions have risen in the past week after ethnically Albanian mayors took office in northern Kosovo, a majority Kosovo Serb area, following April elections that Kosovo Serbs had boycotted.
NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) said the recent developments prompted them to increase their presence in northern Kosovo on Monday morning, which they later said turned violent.
The Italian defense ministry said 14 of its KFOR peacekeeping soldiers were injured when protesters threw “Molotov cocktails, with nails, firecrackers and stones inside.”
Hungarian and Moldovan soldiers were also among the injured peacekeeping troops, according to the Italian defense ministry.
“Italian and Hungarian KFOR contingent were the subject of unprovoked attacks and sustained trauma wounds with fractures and burns due to the explosion of incendiary devices,” it said, adding that KFOR medical units treated the soldiers.
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her sympathy for the Italian KFOR soldiers injured in the clashes, adding in a statement, “What is happening is absolutely unacceptable and irresponsible. We will not tolerate further attacks on KFOR.”
Meanwhile, Nemanja Starović, Serbian State Secretary in the Ministry of Defence, offered a different version of events than what was outlined by NATO countries. He said “many” protesters were injured in the clashes and accused KFOR of using flash grenades when the “peaceful” protesters had “decided to disperse and continue the protest tomorrow morning.”
Kosovo, which is mainly ethnically Albanian, won independence from Serbia in 2008. But Serbia still considers Kosovo to be an integral part of its territory as do the Serbs living in northern Kosovo.
NATO has troops stationed in Kosovo to maintain peace, with tensions often flaring between Serbia and Kosovo.
The NATO-led multi-national contingents had been deployed to four municipalities in the region to contain “violent demonstrations” as “newly elected mayors in recent days tried to take office,” KFOR said in a statement.
On Friday, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić put the armed forces on the highest level of combat readiness. That decision followed Kosovo police clashing with protesters who tried to block a newly elected ethnic Albanian mayor from entering their office.
On Monday, barbed wire had been put around a municipal administration building in the municipality of Leposavić, with KFOR troops reported to be wearing anti-riot gear, CNN affiliate N1 reported. It added that Kosovo police special units erected a fence near the municipal administration building in the town of Zvecan.
Kosovo police say protesters had shown violence on Monday as they gathered in the municipalities of “Leposaviq, Zubin Potok and Zveqan.” Police added that in front of a facility in Zvecan, protesters had thrown tear gas and “tried to cross the security cordons to enter into the municipality facility by force.”
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić described KFOR’s increased presence in northern Kosovo on Monday as “belated” and said “the task of this international mission was to protect the interests and peace of the people in Kosovo and Metohija, not the usurpers.”
Brnabić said the situation in Kosovo and Metohija is “tense and difficult” and said, “It has never been more difficult.” Brnabić also expressed her “gratitude to Serbs in the province for remaining calm and refraining from violence.”
Meanwhile, the United States ambassador to Kosovo, Jeff Hovenier, condemned “violent actions” by protesters, citing the use of explosives.
The European Union Ambassador to Kosovo, Tomáš Szunyog, also condemned actions by protesters, citing damage to media vehicles.
Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, also spoke about the situation on Monday, describing it as a “large eruption is brewing up in the center of Europe.”
