Srdjan Susnica: Vulin – An important bolt of the Vucic regime, a radicaliser of the region and a target of sanctions over Kosovo and the pro-Russian agenda (Part Two)

Geopost: Kurti said in June that his vision of the Association is based on the Croatian model of national minorities. He also said in February that one of the conditions for the creation of a Community of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo is the creation of an equal community for Albanians in the south of Serbia.

Šušnica: Kosovo has an obligation to integrate and will certainly do so according to the letter and spirit of the Brussels agreements and Kosovo’s laws, not according to Belgrade’s measures and wishes. The Association of Serb-majority municipalities must be and remain as defined, i.e. as a statutory non-governmental organization without original powers, established in accordance with the existing Constitution and laws of Kosovo as they are now, without exclusive, original or special powers, through which the municipalities will exercise their local competences in strictly defined areas and in accordance with the existing laws of Kosovo, and which will not be allowed to deal with police, justice, security, intelligence, defense and foreign policy issues.

On the other hand, the Kosovo government rightly raises two issues related to the merging of Serb-majority municipalities. The first is why should only Serbs have the right to merge? Everyone should have this right, and that is why the NGO form is the most correct. If Belgrade’s wishes to introduce the association into the system as a legal entity were to come true, this could be made possible for other minorities in Kosovo, which would fundamentally change Kosovo’s legal and electoral system. The second question is why should not Albanians and Bosniaks in Serbia have a reciprocal right to the same level of collective political representation and representation through the ‘community’ as Belgrade demands for Kosovo Serbs? Why should there not be mandatory quotas in the Serbian Assembly for the election of a certain number of representatives of Albanians, Bosniaks and other minorities, in proportion to the representation of Serbs in the Kosovo Parliament? There is not, and there will not be.

Geopost: Why?

Šušnica: The answer is that Belgrade is not looking for an association for the well-being of Kosovo Serbs, but for the implementation of its toxic pro-Russian and all-Serb policies in the region. If Belgrade cared about the Kosovo Serbs, it would leave them to negotiate their own deal with the government in Pristina.

My message to the Kosovars, Albanians and Serbs, if you agree to the creation of an association that would be even a little bit more than what the Brussels Agreement defines (a statutory NGO with no original legal powers and definitions), you can pack your bags and move to Western Europe right now, because your children’s generations will not have a state or a political environment in which to progress and build a democratic, free and prosperous society. If you do not believe me, look at Bosnia and Herzegovina, and then, in a few years’ time, at Montenegro, where there will also be a complete saoization of politics and society.

Geopost: Does the West seem to be ignoring the obvious situation on the ground? Not only in Kosovo, but also in Montenegro, BiH …

Šušnica: It is important to offer an answer to this question as well – how is it possible that Belgrade is doing what it is doing and the West is ignoring it and even encouraging it with its lukewarm reactions, or even worse, by punishing the state and collectives that are under attack and are in danger of Belgrade taking control of the internal political processes in their country? Kosovo is being forced by Western envoys to surrender part of its sovereignty through an inflated association to the state of Serbia – a country that has not yet come to terms with its borders and that twice in the 20th century tried to ‘solve’ the ‘Kosovo question’ by genocide.

In the last 10 years, Belgrade has developed a strong blackmailing capacity towards the West. It has strengthened Russia’s security, propaganda and economic presence in Serbia and Republika Srpska, and is supporting the pro-Russian regime of Milorad Dodik in its unconstitutional, secessionist and parastatals activities.

Serbia as a state has armed itself and as a society has radicalized, russified and militarized. Serbia has not broken its deep ties and cooperation with Russia and will never do so, and is capable of taking advantage of a favorable geopolitical constellation in which Russia would be in a position to support future pro-serbian secessionist and even armed adventures in the region.

Serbia managed to arm itself to such an extent that it was untouchable for NATO, and more specifically, by acquiring Chinese and Russian anti-aircraft systems, Belgrade raised the threshold of tolerance to the threat of force that would eventually come from the West as a means of deterrence and pressure. In other words, there is no way that the West can project force on Serbia in such a way that anyone in Belgrade would take it seriously.

The reason is not only the arming of Serbia, but also the disunity of the Western alliance and the unwillingness of some NATO members, as well as political actors in Europe, such as the Orban regime, conservative and ultra-right parties, to vote for any kind of coercion towards Serbia. Serbia is successfully uniting European right-wing parties and movements from the Urals to the Atlantic and is well positioned in this neo-fascist international, a state project in which it is investing.

The Western alliance is aware that Serbian and pan-Serbian nationalism have the capacity, the resources, the fanaticism and the will to demonstrate force and even to ignite a minor or major armed conflict in the Balkans if they judge it to be in their interest or if they feel that the moment is now or never. In a complex global situation, the West needs a stable Balkans and is aware that Serbia will not become a democratic state overnight whose foreign policy and values are aligned with those of a free and democratic Western society.

Perhaps we should look for reasons in all this why the West is pleasing Serbia, trying to please it, appease it, at least temporarily, to separate Belgrade from Russia on some issues, at least while the active war in Ukraine continues and while Chinese-US relations are so strained. Russia, with the help of a radicalized Serbia and the Republika Srpska, could indeed easily ignite a new front in Europe.

There is a possibility that in late 2024 and early 2025 the conditions will be created for a full-blown political storm, which will help to spark a conflict in the Balkans.

Geopost: What exactly do you mean?

Šušnica: There are delicate negotiations going on between Beijing and Washington, in which the US administration is trying to lower tensions and win China over to a peace plan that would satisfy Putin. At the same time, they are trying to buy time and dissuade China from escalating, since the US and its Western allies have the problem of arming Ukraine and Taiwan at the same time and keeping their warehouses full in the long term. For a year now, the war in Ukraine has been fought as a ‘war of attrition’, in which three factors are decisive: the will of the battlefield, the increase in the country’s own military production and the degradation of the opponent’s military production and resources.

The Ukrainians have shown a will to fight and a determination to increase local military production and reduce Russian military resources in line with their capabilities. But the Western alliance has not yet shown either the unity or the will to multiply its own military production on a scale that would give Ukraine, and indirectly the West, a strategic advantage. The fact that thirteen years of production of the Javelin anti-tank system in Ukraine was used up in the first year of the war is enough to show that production needs to be increased significantly. Western warehouses are rapidly emptying, procurement procedures are complex, fragmented and time-consuming, and the defense plans and efforts of Western governments are under constant criticism from both the ultra-right and the left. Military equipment manufacturers are looking for long-term financial guarantees to build new production facilities. Public opinion in Europe is divided and the majority is against increasing military budgets at the expense of comfort.

Western governments believe that sanctions will degrade Russia’s economy, military hardware and manufacturing, but the facts say otherwise. In 2022, Russia’s GDP fell by about three per cent (Ukraine’s by more than 30 per cent), but in 2023, Russia’s GDP is expected to grow. Russia’s warehouses are full of old and low-tech weapons that are perfectly suited to a war of attrition and total destruction. Russia manages to evade sanctions on almost all fronts, especially as regards military production. Electronic components, semi-finished and finished raw materials and combat systems are procured without interruption from China, India, Iran, Serbia and even Turkey. Former Soviet republics, Asian and African countries are buying Soviet equipment or equipment that was sold to them until recently. The West has simply failed to degrade or even significantly slow down military production in Russia, and, on the other hand, it lacks the political determination to increase its own urgently and massively.

Barring a miracle, the Ukrainian counter-offensive will not be able to dislodge the Russian forces, while on the other hand the prospects of a new Russian offensive on the eastern front, in the Kharkiv region across the Oskil river, where the Russians have been massing equipment and troops for months, are increasingly likely. This is the main reason why Washington has supplied artillery cluster weapons to Ukraine, as this could deter the Russians from attacking in the first place, or help Ukraine to defend itself and at the same time sustain an offensive by its forces on the southern front.

All of the above, together with the absence of any significant achievements on the battlefield and the fact that 2024 is a year of super-election in key states, suggests that 2024 will still be a year of ceasefires, whether the Ukrainians want it or not, provided, of course, that Washington finds a way to bring Putin to the table.

That is why the Western allies are in no hurry to ramp up military production, because no one is sure what 2024 will bring. There are the US general elections, the EU parliamentary elections, then the Russian presidential elections and the Belarusian parliamentary elections, the Turkish local elections, while the British general elections are due in early 2025.

In the Balkans, local elections are held in Bosnia, parliamentary elections in Croatia and North Macedonia, presidential elections in Romania and Moldova, and in the Asia-Pacific region, general elections will be held in Taiwan, South Korea and Australia. US Air Force Commander General Minihan said earlier this year, “I hope I’m wrong, but my feeling is that we will be at war in 2025.” The US presidential election is in 2024 and we we will be giving China’s President Xi a distraction for America. Taiwan’s presidential election is in 2024 and we will give Xi a reason to attack.”

Geopost: You say that next year will be the year of the ceasefire, whether the Ukrainians want it or not. So even at the cost of giving up some territories?

Šušnica: The ceasefire in Ukraine gives Washington a breather and a space to deal with China, but it also frees Moscow to continue to engage more seriously with the Balkans, the Sahel and the Middle East.

The occupied areas in Ukraine would remain in Russian hands and would act as a tampon zone, while a demilitarize zone would be established along the front line.

On the other hand, Ukraine would have the opportunity to rebuild, at a cost of $360 billion according to the most modest estimates. Kiev would have strong NATO security guarantees, paving the way to the EU and the opportunity to build and strengthen democratic institutions, the rule of law, digitization and modernization of the government sector and society. This could be a new definition of victory, which will go de facto, but not de jure, with the bitter pill of consenting to the occupation of part of one’s own country.

Ukraine’s decision, whatever it might be, would in fact represent a critical moment that would either postpone the spread of this Eurasian war for a longer period of time, or, in conjunction with other circumstances, would trigger a perfect storm that would begin to spread the conflict to the Balkans, the Baltic, the Black Sea basin, Taiwan, etc.

Geopost: This scenario is actually something that Russian players in the region want, isn’t it?

Šušnica: Global circumstances are favorable to the Putin regime and its allies in the Balkans. The change in the global political paradigm from liberal and multilateralism and human rights to the 19th century’s stodgy realpolitik, bilateralism, isolationism, normalization and the growth of an ultra-right-wing and conservative agenda, with the global rise of China and the aggressive return of Russia’s militant despotism to the world stage – all these are circumstances in which Serbia, led by an all-embracing nationalism, is swimming perfectly well.

The aggression against Ukraine, the short-term weaknesses of the Russian army and state have indeed interrupted Belgrade’s plans and expectations, but this has not deterred Serbia from its three strategic objectives in the region, namely – a recognized independent state of the Republika Srpska, first in Bosnia, as a community of states, later as an independent state; the identity and political subjugation of Montenegro through the church, the media and puppet political parties, and the Pan-Serbianization of the Montenegrin people; and, if it cannot be broken up immediately, then control of Kosovo through the legally established t. through the so-called “community of Serb municipalities”, whose state-building will go in the direction of either destroying the state of Kosovo from within or seceding.

Geopost: Aleksandar Vulin, head of the BIA and a key part of Vucic’s anti-democratic, anti-Western project, is under US sanctions. But the majority of Serbia is fiercely defending this and that Vulin, and the authorities are demanding proof from the Americans of the stated reasons for the sanctions. How do you see it all?

Šušnica: Vulin is a the court fool and a plaything of the Vucic regime, but that does not make him any less dangerous. Even as he is, he is still an important pawn of official Belgrade, radicalizing Serbia and the region, and a direct threat to peace in the region. He has been placed in such an important position in order to give strength to his phantasmagorias, but also to protect the lucrative business of the Vucic regime. In a possible scenario of armed conflict, this psychological profile would normally find himself at the forefront of actions of mass crimes against humanity, but his lack of organizational, security-intelligence, military and leadership skills makes him less dangerous and more harmful to his own country.

The sanctions against Vulin are directly linked to Kosovo and the recent violence directed by Serbian security structures and Russian agencies in the north. Indirectly, they are linked to the pro-Russian agenda that Belgrade is pursuing in the region with the regime of Milorad Dodik.

But the West is trotting behind Serbia. Serbia is not defending Vulin per se, but it is defending its anti-Western, anti-American, anti-NATO and pro-Russian elections, while the same West is pleasing Serbia, looking down on it and proclaiming it, without any basis, to be the leader in the region. Vulin is just an evil clown who is deliberately placed at the center of the scene of a symbolic confrontation, making noise and distracting attention from the vitally important activities of official Belgrade. After all, he can be used as a chip in the Kosovo negotiations, because in these negotiations Serbia is using the issue of sanctions against Russia, or the fact that it is selling arms and equipment to Ukraine and Russia at the same time.

Geopost: Vulin recently allowed two Sarajevo students, who were accused on social media of glorifying crimes and Hague convicts, to continue their studies in Belgrade on the day of the 28th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. Is reconciliation possible with the kind of Serbia that not only the authorities in Montenegro, but also the new authorities in BiH and the international community have been persuading us to believe in all along?

Šušnica: The lucky one is the one who is surprised by it. Personally, I regret the choices those two young people made, but it is time, they will regret it. From Petar Kočić to the two of them today, there is a line of Serbs and Serbian women who sooner or later, silently or publicly, at large, in prison or in a psychiatric clinic, repented for having put their lives at the service and drive of political Belgrade.

I would illustrate the second part of the question with a vignette. Do you know when the bridges of peace and friendship from our neighbors to Serbia will be at their grandest? Well, when they start building over the deep Corinthian canals, which have to be dug in the meantime. That is the formula for survival with such Serbia. I am sorry, but there is no one more to blame for this than the state and the Church of Serbia itself.

Geopost: Do the current protests against violence in Belgrade have the potential to bring about change? They are all uniformly AGAINST Vucic, but it is not clear what they are FOR.

Šušnica: Unfortunately, these protests don’t have the power to be politicized and to be something more than a civil condemnation of the violence. The reasons for this lie in the absence of an ideological alternative to the Vucic regime and the policies pursued by the SNS, the Serbian Church and the institutions under their control.

Vucic has mastered the catch-all approach and, even if he does not win everyone to his camp, he has, with his rhetoric, his performance and his media-boot apparatus, convinced the whole of Serbia that he represents all the political positions that are beneficial for Serbia on all issues, at once and everywhere.

In doing so, he fragments alternative thinking and opposition tendencies, makes consolidation impossible and blunts the sharpness of criticism of himself, especially on certain issues.

Take, for example, the question of Draža Mihajlović and the Chetniks.

The opposition in Serbia on this issue is practically non-existent. A convincing minority of the Serbian public intelligentsia strongly criticizes the adherence of the majority of Serbia to a man who is not only a collaborator of the Nazi occupier, but also a war criminal, and such people cannot cross the threshold when they organize themselves politically.

Meanwhile, the Chetnik cult and the revisionist lie about Draža and the Chetniks as anti-fascists and resisters has penetrated society so deeply that you have LGBT people who glorify the Chetniks, judges and lawyers who have nothing against the rehabilitation of the worst Chetnik criminals. You have some prominent opposition figures who take a mediocre humanitarian approach to the issue of Draža Mihajlović, and so they are very sympathetic to everyone knowing about his grave, but they do not ask where the graves of his victims are, and what will happen when his grave becomes the new shrine for young people in Serbia.

Many political actors and media who are not in favor of the Chetniks refuse to speak out because they fear losing voters, audiences and then intermediaries, they ignore them, they remain silent. And so it is with almost all pressing issues.

For both the regime and the majority of the opposition, Montenegro is a Serbian state and Montenegrins are Serbs, and Milo Djukanović is the last communist dictator and mafioso.

The same applies to the genocide and war crimes in Bosnia.

The regime and most of the opposition deny the genocide in Srebrenica, the moderates remain silent or avoid qualifying the crime in public statements, resorting to euphemisms and symbolic trading, such as ‘you have us too’.

For example, one of the leaders of the opposition movement “Do not let Belgrade drown”, Dobrica Veselinovic, visited Potocari on 11 July and made a public statement in which he avoided labelling the crimes in Srebrenica as genocide, but his statement was a kind of justification for his presence there, saying that “if the mothers of Srebrenica went to Jasenovac, then we are obliged to be in Srebrenica because of them”.

What does he mean? That there is no genocide in Srebrenica without Jasenovac? That it is not possible to pay tribute to the victims of Srebrenica who were killed during the lifetime of little Dobrica, while the Mothers of Srebrenica do not pay tribute to the victims of Jasenovac who were killed during the lifetime of Dobrica’s great-grandfather?

And, by the way, it should be said that the victims of Jasenovac were not Serbs, but Bosnian Serbs, which is a crucial, rarely insurmountable difference? Or perhaps Dobrica meant to say that Srebrenica was a consequence of Jasenovac, or that Srebrenica would not have existed without Jasenovac?

Before Dobrica, Vučić himself came to Potočare with similar messages, avoiding the word genocide, respecting the victims of a crime he denies. Of course, the leader of the opposition avoided a clear articulation of who they are and a condemnation of the criminals, or, for example, a clear locus of Serbian political responsibility for the genocide, let alone a condemnation of the political and intellectual strategists of this crime. This example alone clearly shows how ideologically pale, inarticulate, as well as cowardly, often cynical and malicious, the Serbian opposition is.

ALICIA KEARNS DATA WELL KNOWN TO THE STATE BORDER AGENCIES OF MONTENEGRO AND BOSNIA

Geopost: You mentioned the Serbian Church as a disturbing factor in the way of real reconciliation in the region. If and when changes take place in Serbia in the future, could we expect the Serbian Orthodox Church to be the first candidate for dissolution? How much can we expect from the Serbian opposition? The recent allegations by British MP Alicia Kearns of arms smuggling from Serbia to Kosovo have led a good part of the opposition to side with the church, as it has so often done when it comes to the church.

Šušnica: The information presented by the British MEP is very well known to the Montenegrin and Bosnian state border, police and intelligence services, both when it comes to weapons and when it comes to foreign currency, gold, stolen cultural and historical heritage, art, and also when it comes to the logistics of the illegal and clandestine entry and exit of persons of security interest, Russian agents, members of Serbian and Russian militant and extremist groups in neighboring countries. This church has been the biggest logistician, smuggler of weapons and money to pay the media and a facilitator in all the major hybrid operations in Montenegro, from the protests in 2015 to the attempted coup in 2016 to the processions of 2020.

It is important to realize that the Serbian Church is the last relic of the former Yugoslavia under the control of Serbia and plays three main roles for that country in the so-called “Serbian world”. The first is ideological and assimilationist. The Serbian Church is the most powerful vehicle for the idea of Greater Serbian and pan-Serbian nationalism and the platform through which the Serbianisation of Bosnian, Herzegovinian and Montenegrin Orthodox Christians began in the 19th century and the assimilation of Montenegrins into Serbs and Serbo-Montenegrins today, as well as the brutal theft and distortion of Montenegrin and Bosnian-Herzegovinian history, cultural, historical and religious heritage.

The second is a para-state. It is a state church that serves the state interests of Serbia. It serves both as an intelligence and security platform and as a smuggling and criminal network, suitable for bypassing the security apparatuses of neighboring countries, as a source of funding for political supporters and Serbian extremist groups in neighboring countries.

The third role is victimization, where the Church has taken a monopoly over Serbian victims, graves and bones, everything and everywhere, in order to portray the Serbs as the most endangered nation in the Balkans and the so-called “Serbian question” as unsolved. The state of Serbia will never give up such a church as its instrument. Never.

Geopost: So Jesus Christ does not “dwell” in that church and God’s commandments do not apply…

Šušnica: It is increasingly difficult to identify the Serbian church in purely religious terms with the Christian church, which has strongly and decisively distanced itself from the covenant of Christ and devoted itself entirely to the cult of the Kosovar and militant Vidovdanist covenant.

The Serbian Church is the birthplace of a particular form of Saint Sava nationalism and religious clericalism that has taken over the whole of society and all the institutions of the state, including the military. It is present throughout the Western Balkans.

Serbia simply is not and cannot be and will not be Belgium for a long time to come, nor will the church in Serbia separate from the state and become a decent Christian church for a long time to come. And all Serbia’s neighbors should formulate their realistic political objectives, strategies and expectations in the light of these facts. Both Bosnia and Kosovo, and especially Montenegro, must prepare their citizens for the fact that the struggle for their own cultural, identity, religious, political sovereignty and independence from Serbia and from the all-Serbian and Russian influence will last for decades, and that to this end they must join together in joint regional initiatives, but also join the Euro-Atlantic communities as soon as possible.

Geopost: Will the unravelling of the Kosovo knot, as some predict, be to the detriment of other countries in the region, especially Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro?

Šušnica: Belgrade is currently the focal point where all the major security and political crises in the Balkans are coming together, and in Belgrade the intelligence community complex, the church and the conservative intelligentsia of Serbia is the focal point.

The common denominator of the crises in Kosovo, Bosnia and Montenegro is precisely Serbia and its mini-imperial policy of pan-Serbianism with its back to Russia – through aggressive propaganda, through the conquest of its neighbors’ media and political and electoral arenas, through the daily victimization and gross exploitation of the Bosnian, Kosovar and Montenegrin Serbs, offensive lobbying and bribery of foreign diplomats and officials of international organizations, daily denial of crimes committed in the name of Serbia and Serbs, denial of the sovereignty and identity of neighboring peoples, bold demonstrations of force, threats of secession and incitement to violence. This is a strategy of daily blackmailing of the West by crises in the region.

I think I have partly answered this question in previous answers. This issue of Kosovo being compensated by the territory of a neighboring country is a false issue and serves to distract political opponents. Belgrade is not going to meet international actors and the public with such naively set territorial ‘trades’.

Just think of how long and carefully the proposal for the partition of Kosovo, i.e. swapping the north of Kosovo for the south of Serbia, was prepared, how long Thaci spent preparing for the same and the Trump administration’s sympathy for the plan itself. And again, nothing. Europe is susceptible to territorial swaps, especially now. That does not mean that it will always be so.

Serbia’s policy is maximalist in the short and long term, but the local demands and tactics are not. We need to understand that Belgrade acts filigree and locally because it has a strong ideological base, political will and vast resources, embodied in the church, the intelligence apparatus, the media and the politically organised Serbian community in each of the target countries. Serbia weaves a web of circumstances and produces small local crises, makes and breaks partnerships, bribes potential allies, compromises political opponents in order to achieve local levers of power and influence, and very concrete negotiating trump cards. They do not always emerge as winners, as the moves of the Kosovo government under Kurti best demonstrate.

Simply put, Kurti outplayed Vučić, found room to exploit the limitations of the Serbian approach. In the short term, insisting on a “Kosovo for Republika Srpska” trade would only harm Belgrade. Why would they do that when the Republika Srpska is de facto theirs, Montenegro too, and the north of Kosovo too. /The Geopost/