It’s been three days since the armed conflict in the village of Banjska, in Kosovo and Metohija, in which four Serbs and one Kosovo policeman were killed, and it is still not clear what really happened there and who wanted this one-day war.
Numerous questions remain unanswered to which neither Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, nor Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti gave answers, and to which the public is entitled to.
It remains unclear why the Serbs used trucks to block a rural road on which there is not much traffic at three o’clock in the morning, near the Orthodox monastery. Why did they choose that particular night when the President of Serbia was on the plane from New York to Belgrade, but also the moment when Kurti was not exactly the most popular Balkan politician in the West?
If Vučić’s argument is correct that the Serbs revolted because they could no longer endure Kurti’s terror, the question is why they did not do it earlier when there were many more direct reasons.
It is still unclear who organized the group of Serbs and whether Milan Radoičić, the vice-president of the Serbian List, is behind everything, as the Kosovo authorities claim, which Belgrade is keeping mum about.
It is also unclear where so many seized weapons came from, how they arrived in Banjska and why the Kosovo police and KFOR did not even stop the armoured vehicle in time if they already had drone footage of it.
Who could possibly benefit from the shooting and why did KFOR not react in time for the first time, even though it’s in their job description to take care of security and peace in the north of Kosovo?
It is also unclear why Serbian officials did not immediately publish the names of the killed Serbs and why it took so long for the Serbian List to at least express its condolences to the families of the victims.
Why did they make a statement only after the German ambassador in Kosovo was summoned, but without a single word refuting claims that Milan Radoičić was one of the organizers of the rebellion in Banjska? It also remains unclear why the Kosovo authorities failed to disclose the names of the arrested Serbs, while the local media wrote about them extensively.
It also remained unclear whether the Serbian security structures knew that the Serbs in Kosovo were preparing a rebellion. If they did not know, the question is whether those rebellion groups broke away from Belgrade’s control and set out to solve their own conflicts in the absence of the Serbian president. If the security services knew what was going on, did they inform the president of the state on time?
Official Belgrade, i.e. the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, did not provide answers to all these questions in the only, rather late public address on Sunday evening. His claim that Kurti’s plan was to drag the Serbs into a war with NATO is not a sufficient explanation for what happened in Banjska on Sunday.
(Danas, 27.09.2023)
https://www.danas.rs/vesti/politika/banjska-rat-radoicic-vucic-kurti/
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