Three years since the attack on NATO soldiers: Vučić's direct role through Radoić in the destabilization of the north

On May 29, 2023, the most serious clash in recent years between violent Serbian hooligans and NATO peacekeeping troops in Kosovo took place in Zvecan.

Following the boycott of the April local elections by the Serbian List and part of the Serbian community in the north, Kosovo institutions decided that the elected Albanian mayors of the four northern municipalities, Zvecan, Leposaviq, Zubin Potok and North Mitrovica, should enter municipal buildings and begin exercising their duties.

In Zvecan, organized crowds gathered near the municipal building and, when KFOR intervened to establish a security cordon and prevent violence, the situation escalated. Violent protesters attacked NATO soldiers with explosive devices, stones, metal rods, Molotov cocktails and other dangerous objects. KFOR described the attacks as unprovoked, and the crowd as violent and dangerous.

Three years after the attack, one thing remains clear: that day was not a “local incident” or a spontaneous outburst of anger. It was a direct challenge to NATO’s presence in Kosovo and dangerous proof that the north can be instrumentalized as a front for political and geopolitical pressure whenever Belgrade needs a crisis.

That afternoon, violent protesters clashed with KFOR peacekeepers on a scale that surpassed any similar episode in the last decade, using explosive devices, stones, metal bars, Molotov cocktails and, according to images and reports, even firearms. The result was dramatic: dozens of NATO soldiers were injured and one Hungarian soldier was left with permanent injuries, making Zvecan one of the most serious confrontations with KFOR since Kosovo’s declaration of independence.

The version that Belgrade initially tried to build that it was a spontaneous protest by local Serbs quickly faded in the face of several elements that do not fit the logic of a random crowd.

First, the very profile of violence, the means and tactics used against an equipped and trained force like KFOR speak of preparation, not of spontaneous reaction.

Secondly, the political organization that preceded the incident, the boycott of the local elections by the Serbian community, channeled through the Serbian List, created the conditions for a manufactured crisis with the aim of delegitimizing the institutional order and provoking confrontation at the moment when the elected mayors would enter the municipal buildings.

This was a classic mechanism of "designed crisis", first creating an institutional vacuum through boycott, then portraying the implementation of the constitutional order as a provocation and, finally, using the organized crowd to turn the situation into a clash.

The KFOR strike had a meaning that goes beyond Kosovo. An attack on NATO troops is an attack on NATO's credibility. It is an attempt to produce the perception that the Alliance does not control the terrain, that stability is conditional, and that any institutional normalization could be sabotaged by a rapid violent mobilization.

These are crises that do not necessarily require military victory; they require victories of perception. It is enough to create the image of insecurity, increase the cost of action for Kosovo's institutions, and push international diplomacy towards a "compromise" that, in practice, rewards destabilization.

In the analysis of the architecture of violence in the north, the name of Milan Radoić remains a central node. He was not a marginal local figure, but an actor who built control networks where organized crime, political pressure, and informal security structures functioned as a single body.

Radoićić, as the former vice-president of the Serbian List, embodied precisely that gray area where political representation becomes an operational instrument. His public admission of organizing the armed attack in Banjska in September 2023 definitively demolished the idea that violence is “self-organization of disgruntled citizens.” When an organizer takes responsibility for a paramilitary operation, infrastructure, people, weapons, logistics, financing, shelter, and protection come to the fore.

Here also arises the question that the West has often avoided for pragmatic reasons: how can such architecture survive without a political umbrella?

Another worrying dimension is the ideological role of segments of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which, in times of crisis, have served as an amplifier of narratives of radical nationalism. When northern Kosovo is described as “occupied territory”, when Kosovo institutions are portrayed as an existential threat and the presence of NATO as an enemy, a climate is created where violence is justified as “national defense”.

The case of Banjska, with the armed group barricaded in a monastery, made this dimension even more acute. Even if there is no talk of direct institutional involvement, the very use of religious spaces as operational shelters is a warning sign of how religious nationalism can be intertwined with paramilitary logic.

Aleksandar Vučić continues to maintain a political duality that has brought him benefits outside Serbia, appearing as a factor of stability and as an indispensable person for dialogue, while inside he feeds narratives of victimization and protects, directly or indirectly, the structures that produce crisis.

This is why controlled tension in the north is valuable, it becomes an instrument of pressure. Every time Serbia seeks to increase its weight in negotiations, the north "ignites", every time a message needs to be sent to the EU and NATO that "without us there is no stability", mechanisms are activated that make stability conditional.

The lack of serious steps against the organizers and the political protection of key figures after the violent episodes reinforces the impression that Belgrade is not just a passive observer, but an indirect sponsor of a pattern of destabilization.

One of the biggest problems remains the way some Western diplomats have framed the situation as an “interethnic escalation,” rather than an organized operation targeting NATO and the state of Kosovo. This neutral language may be useful for lowering the temperature in the short term, but it comes at a strategic cost: it lowers the political cost to destabilizers and sends a signal that the limits of tolerance can be pushed.

Europe is often justified by the fear that Serbia could move even closer to Russia. But the experience of the north has shown that the policy of accommodation does not produce moderation, it produces constant testing of borders.

The events of Zvečan and Banjska naturally fit into the logic of hybrid warfare, the use of paramilitary actors, criminal networks, propaganda and official denial, combined with ideological mobilization and the objective of creating a perception of state dysfunction.

The goal is not necessarily immediate territorial control, it is to control the narrative and political rhythm to keep Kosovo in a cycle of crisis where every institutional step has a security cost and where NATO is forced to deal with emergency management rather than long-term consolidation.

Despite the risk, there is also a significant development, the increase in the capacities of Kosovo institutions to deal with these structures. The Kosovo Intelligence Agency (KIA) has done and continues to do an extraordinary job in the north and everything else. This was followed by arrests, prosecutions and the insistence that the problem is not the Kosovo Serb community, but politically instrumentalized criminal networks, shifting the debate from ethnicity to security and the law.

This approach is also key for the West; the sooner it is accepted that the problem is the criminal and political architecture that holds the north hostage, the less room Belgrade will have to present every crisis as "civic discontent."

Three years after the attack on KFOR, the question is not just who threw the stone or who lit the Molotov cocktail. The question is who built the climate, who organized the mobilization, who protected the infrastructure, and who reduced the political cost of the violence.

Zvecani was a warning that paramilitary nationalism linked to criminal networks and a political umbrella can move from barricades to open terror against international forces. If this is read as an incident, it will be repeated. If it is read as a model, then the response should be straightforward: accountability, targeted sanctions, pressure on political sponsors, and unequivocal support for constitutional order and NATO’s presence in Kosovo. /UN/The GeoPost