Kosovo raids Serbia-linked offices weeks before elections

PRISTINA: Kosovo’s police raided 10 Belgrade-linked local government offices in ethnic Serb areas, the interior ministry said today, as Serbia denounced the move as a “dangerous escalation” just weeks ahead of parliamentary elections in Kosovo.

The raids are the latest in a series of measures launched by Pristina to dismantle the so-called parallel system of social services and political offices backed by Serbia inside Kosovo.

Most of the offices targeted today provide no actual services on the ground.

They have nevertheless long served as the symbolic presence of Serbia’s political institutions inside Kosovo.

“The era of parallel and criminal municipalities and institutions of Serbia in the Republic of Kosovo ends,” said interior minister Xhelal Svecla in a Facebook post.

He listed the locations of the offices closed, including one in the capital Pristina.

Serbian post offices and banks were also shuttered during the operation, said Svecla.

“As we have pledged, we will not allow any parallelism, let alone criminal, of Serbia to violate the Constitution and the rule of law in our country,” the minister added.

Serbian foreign minister Marko Djuric was quick to condemn the closures as a “dangerous escalation”.

“These aggressive moves are not just an attack on institutions but a blatant attempt to undermine the collective rights and identity of Serbs in Kosovo,” Djuric said in a post on social media.

Employees at the offices said the Kosovo authorities had told them they did not have the proper paperwork to remain open, while signs were posted on the buildings said activities on the premises had been suspended.

“They arrived at the office and told us that we could no longer work … they are demanding a certificate. I don’t understand what they want,” Novak Zivic, who oversees the Serbian local government office in Pristina, told the broadcaster RTS.

Heightened tensions

The raids come with ethnic tensions high in Kosovo ahead of February’s parliamentary elections.

Kosovo’s prime minister Albin Kurti has made his efforts to bridle Belgrade’s remaining institutions based in Kosovo part of his campaign platform.

In the past year, Kosovo authorities have effectively outlawed the Serbian dinar, closed banks that relied on the currency and shuttered post offices where pension payments could be cashed.

Kosovo Serbs can no longer drive cars with Serbia plates and must have local driving licences.

And while past raids have largely focused on ethnic Serb communities living in the restive north near the border with Serbia, today’s operations targeted other Serb enclaves scattered across central and southern Kosovo.

After this latest operation, Serb-administered schools and healthcare clinics are the last remaining institutions backed by Belgrade still operating inside Kosovo.

The spike in tensions comes after EU- and US-backed negotiations between Kosovo and Serbia all but collapsed in 2023.

In the wake of the raids, a meeting in Brussels between Kosovo and Serbian representatives was cancelled today.

It was to have discussed a recent deal on the search for missing people following the 1990s conflict.

“The agreement is impossible in the current conditions created today by Kurti,” said the Serbian delegation, broadcaster RTS reported.

Animosity between Kosovo and Serbia has persisted since the war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in the late 1990s.

Kosovo later declared independence in 2008, a move that Serbia has never acknowledged.

Kosovo is overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Albanians, but in the northern stretches along the border with Serbia ethnic Serbs remain the majority in several municipalities.