Balkan watching (catch all)

[davidbfpo]

Prompted by the next post I have merged three threads here; one referred to Wahhabi activity in the Balkans and a commentary on the Dayton Accords. A free text search found that Bosnia appears in over two hundred threads, but only these threads could be merged.

There is a separate, historical thread on Kosovo Independence, which covered 2008-2010 and it is has been closed:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=4924

[davidbfpo]

A quick overview 'Radicalisation in Bosnia: old wounds reopened by an emerging problem':https://theconversation.com/radicalisation-in-bosnia-old-wounds-reopened-by-an-emerging-problem-63534?

[OUTLAW 09]

Russian, Serbian, Nationalists Accused of Plotting Montenegro Coup :: Balkan Insight
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/arti...disqus_thread#
…

[OUTLAW 09]

Montenegro has officially accused some of detained terrorists fighting in East-Ukraine among pro-Russian terrorists
https://twitter.com/LUGANSK_TODAY/st...9706590433280#

Montenegro: Russians behind coup attempt, plot to kill PM. Some have fought for pro-Russia rebels in eastern Ukraine
https://apnews.com/3224b10f9bf043318b12d54cf06d1c21#

[OUTLAW 09]

Novorossia Russian mersenary Aleksandar Sindjelic, fought in eastern Ukraine now involved in Montenegro pro-Russian planned/organized/led coup attempt against their Western focused PM.

[davidbfpo]

The puzzling story of an attempted coup in Montenegro and maybe a plot to murder the Serbian Prime Minister - with suspected Russian backing and using a criminal gang who'd served in Eastern Ukraine.

Note the report is now eleven days old, "crowded out" by other matters:https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ontenegro-coup

[OUTLAW 09]

Neo-Nazi training in NATO member Hungary and an attempted coup in Monte#negro: The Russian bear is getting bolder
http://wpo.st/cN-J2

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Suspect In Alleged Montenegro Coup Plot Pictured With Lavrov In Belgrade
http://www.rferl.org/a/montenegro-co...28176472.html#

[OUTLAW 09]

Moldovas new pro-Russian president fires defence minister for 'flirting with NATO'

http://www.unian.info/world/1700197-...ith-nato.html#

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Montenegro Issues Warrant For Arrest Of Russians, Serbs In Alleged Coup Plot
http://www.rferl.org/a/28201059.html

"Russia wants not only a 'New Yalta',
but also western endorsement of its right to interpret rules as it sees fit"
http://app.ft.com/content/5d3d406a-c...-f57d90f6741a#

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump's great friend Putin is now causing a potential explosion in the Balkans....HOW is Trump going to reign in his friend and protector Putin...???

https://www.yahoo.com/news/serbia-wa...o-amid-balkan-...

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — A Serbian train halted at the border with Kosovo and bearing signs reading "Kosovo is Serbian," has fueled a major crisis in the Balkans and escalated a potential Russia-West row over dominance in the heart of the Balkans.
Serbia accused Kosovo's leaders on Sunday of "wanting war" and warned that it would defend "every inch" of its territory, a day after the train, decorated in Serbian Christian Orthodox symbols and flags, was prevented from entering the neighboring nation.
Kosovo, supported by much of the West, declared independence from Serbia in 2008. But, Serbia and its Slavic Orthodox ally, Russia, do not recognize the split.
Serbia has sought to maintain influence in Kosovo's north, where most of the country's Serb minority lives. NATO-led troops have controlled Kosovo's borders since a three-month air war in 1999 to stop a bloody Serbian crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists.
Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic issued the latest warning after the passenger train, painted in the colors of the red, blue and white Serbian flag, was prevented from crossing into Kosovo, where his government contends ethnic Serbs are under threat from Kosovo Albanians.
"Yesterday, we were on the verge of clashes," Nikolic said after a meeting of the country's top security body following the train's overnight return to Belgrade. He accused the Kosovo Albanians of "wanting war."
"We are a country which has to protect its people and its territory," Nikolic said, in the strongest rhetoric since the NATO-led troops took control of Kosovo's borders in 1999.
Serbia officially is seeking European Union membership, but has lately been sliding toward the Kremlin and its policies to increase its influence in the Balkans. Serbia has strained relations with most of its neighbors — something many analysts believe is a Russian influence.
Kosovo Prime Minister Isa Mustafa said he had contacted the United States and the European Union to express his country's concerns.
"The time of provocation, conflicts and wars should belong to the past," Mustafa said, adding that such moves "are unacceptable, unnecessary actions that do not contribute to the normalization of the relations between our two countries."
Nikolic, who is staunchly pro-Russian, said the EU and the West have never been on Serbia's side or come to its aid.
"Why were the so-called international community and the Albanians so upset about one train?" Nikolic asked. "Maybe because it had 'Kosovo is Serbian' written on it, and because it had pictures of our icons inside."
He also urged that Serbia halt its EU membership negotiation in Brussels, including a key part that calls for normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo.
"My suggestion now is only to talk in Brussels when this train is allowed to pass. ... If there is no freedom of movement, what kind of Western civilization are we talking about then?" he said.
Nikolic also slammed the outgoing Obama administration, and the U.S. support of Kosovo's independence — comments that reflected the general presumption here that President-elect Donald Trump will be more favorable toward Russia and Serbia.
Referring to the naming of several locations in Kosovo after former President Bill Clinton, he said: "It seems to me that these are the last gasps of the outgoing American administration, whose representatives must earn the names of streets and squares they received for directly supporting, sponsoring the independence of Kosovo."
Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo have soared following the recent detention in France of Ramush Haradinaj, a former Kosovo prime minister, on an arrest warrant from Serbia.
Kosovo has called the warrant illegitimate and urged France to ignore it, while Serbia is urging Haradinaj's quick extradition to face war crimes charges.

1987 is calling, it wants "We will defend the Serbs of Kosovo" back.
Slobodan Milošević was not available for comment.

Serbia seems bent on getting its pre-1912 borders back. That's a very achievable goal, guys -- keep it up. Just do everything Putin says.

THIS is on top of the recent Russian mercenary coup attempt in Montenegro and their voiced anger at Macedonia for wanting to join the EU and NATO......

[OUTLAW 09]

Putin makes his Balkan move...good thing nothing bad has ever happened with Russians egging on Serb nationalism

NATO In Panic. Putin and Lukashenko arming Serbia for the coming Balkan war. Says this pro gov paper in #Serbia.

This headline, which some thought was alarmist, makes much more sense now.

Serbia wants to annex part of #Kosovo using '#Crimea model': president
http://reut.rs/2jhcN0q

Serbia plans to seize a slice of northern Kosovo just as Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014, Kosovo's president told Reuters on Monday, as the two Balkan neighbors trade accusations of wanting to ignite a new regional war.

Kosovo special police units on Saturday prevented a train painted in Serbia's national colors and bearing the words "Kosovo is Serbia" from crossing the border.

Serbia does not recognize the independence of Kosovo, its former province, and did not seek Pristina's permission for the passage of the train, which it paid for and organized. On Sunday Serbia's president, Tomislav Nikolic, said Kosovo's action had shown it wanted war with Belgrade.

Kosovo's President Hashim Thaci said the train was aimed at "provoking" Kosovars in order to create a pretext for Serbia to intervene militarily and annex northern areas of Kosovo, home to some 50,000 ethnic Serbs who refuse to accept the province's independence and want to be governed again by Belgrade.

"Serbia’s intention is to use this train, which was donated by Russia, first to help carve away the northern part of Kosovo and then ... attach it to Serbia. It is the Crimea model," Thaci said in an interview.

He was referring to Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, home to Russia's Black Sea fleet and populated mainly by ethnic Russians who after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 continued to feel loyalty to Moscow rather than to the newly independent government in Kiev.

Crimea's ethnic Russians welcomed Moscow's annexation - carried out initially by soldiers wearing unmarked uniforms to disguise their identity - though the move also triggered Western economic sanctions against Russia.

"CHAIN REACTION"

Serbia lost control of Kosovo when NATO air strikes forced Belgrade to withdraw its troops in 1999 after they had killed 10,000 ethnic Albanian civilians. NATO still has around 5,000 troops stationed in Kosovo to keep the fragile peace.

As well as Serbia, its ally Russia and some other countries also refuse to recognize Kosovo's 2008 independence.

After talks with Serbia's military top brass and state security chiefs in Belgrade on Sunday, Serbia's Nikolic threatened to send troops back into Kosovo.

"If they are killing Serbs, we will send the army, all of us will go, I will go as well, it would not be my first time," said Nikolic, who is a former member of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party and in the 1990s fought alongside Serb paramilitaries in Croatia.

Responding to Nikolic's remarks, Thaci said any attempt by Serbia to annex northern Kosovo would set off "a chain reaction across the whole Western Balkans".

Belgrade and Pristina both aspire to join the European Union and normalizing relations is a condition of their progress, but Serbia continues to block Kosovo's membership of international organizations such as the United Nations.

Bilateral relations came under renewed strain this month when former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj was arrested in France on a warrant from Serbia, which accuses him of war crimes.

[OUTLAW 09]

THE TIMES
Vladimir Putin’s murky plot to cleave Balkans from West

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news...c9f5efd3fc4bc0

In the ill-lit back room of an Orthodox church richly decorated with bone-white marble, a burly priest poured another shot of homemade brandy as he railed against attempts by the Montenegrin government to throw in its lot with the West.

“NATO is nothing but an occupying force,” said Momcilo Krivokapic, 71, dressed in black robes and with a large silver crucifix dangling at his chest.

Krivokapic, a senior cleric, is one of a colourful cast of characters who have turned his Mediterranean homeland into the flashpoint of a dangerous new Cold War that pits a resurgent Kremlin against a weakening West.

It has emerged that the multiple tentacles of Russian interference, which also includes a plot to overthrow the Montenegrin government — and to prevent the country’s planned accession to NATO next year — extended into Krivokapic’s church of St Nicholas in the port city of Kotor.

In a curious ceremony the priest, who sports a long white beard, gave his blessing to a shadowy Russian-backed paramilitary organisation, the Balkan Cossack Army, as members of President Vladimir Putin’s favourite motorcycle gang and a self-styled Russian “general” looked on.

Kotor’s deepwater port, which was built for large battleships and is coveted by the Kremlin and NATO, is one of the reasons this picturesque Mediterranean nation of just 620,000 people is at the centre of a tug of war between Russia and the West.

The Kremlin’s interest in the country is part of wider Russian muscle-flexing across southeastern Europe where it is sponsoring political parties, staging military manoeuvres and developing a mysterious “humanitarian” centre in Serbia that NATO suspects is a cover for espionage. In a further boost for the Kremlin, pro-Russian candidates won presi#dential elections last month in Moldova and Bulgaria.

Western concerns at the Kremlin’s activities in the Balkans, long seen as Europe’s weak underbelly, have been highlighted by a confidential report adopted by NATO last week that sounded the alarm about Russia’s “destabilising” activities in the region.

The report accuses Russia of forging ties with elites in targeted countries, supporting anti-Western groups and buying its way into the energy and media sectors. “As part of Russia’s effort to reassert itself on the world stage, there’s been an increase in activities in the western Balkans, including destabilising behaviour,” the report states.

NATO, it argues, should work with the EU to counter “Russian disinformation” and help Balkan nations increase their “resilience” to the Kremlin’s malign influence.

With just 2000 men under arms, Montenegro — the smallest of the six republics that once made up the socialist former Yugoslavia — will contribute little to NATO, many of whose members are under pressure from US president-elect Donald Trump to increase military spending to 2 per cent of their gross domestic product.

But the political and strategic significance of its accession — coupled with a parallel attempt to join the EU — is huge.

Montenegro is the only country on Europe’s Mediterranean coast outside NATO; a government source called it the “last piece” of “unclaimed real estate” left from Lisbon to the Syrian port of Latakia.

“The western Balkans could be Europe’s next conflict,” said Adam Thomson, until last month Britain’s ambassador to NATO and now director of the European Leadership Network, a think tank.

The importance to Russia of a friendly Mediterranean port became clear in October as its aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov struggled to find a berth to refuel en route from Russia to Syria.

It was against this background that the Balkan Cossack Army, made up of Russian paramilitaries and locals who fought in the Balkan civil wars of the 1990s and the present conflict in Ukraine, came to Krivokapic for a blessing.

The Night Wolves, a Russian motorcycle gang beloved of Putin, travelled almost 3000km from Moscow to attend the event, presided over by Viktor Zaplatin, a self-styled Russian general who fought in several murky conflicts instigated by the Kremlin.

He addressed the crowd in the name of Alexander Borodai, a suspected Russian war criminal targeted by international sanctions for his involvement in Ukraine.

Soon after the creation of the paramilitary outfit, which is now under investigation by authorities, Montenegro was shaken by claims of a Russian-backed plot to seize government institutions after parliamentary elections on October 16.

Two Russians, Eduard Shirokov and Vladimir Popov, who allegedly worked for GRU, Russia’s military intelligence, have been charged with plotting a coup.

Investigators claim the pair operated from Belgrade, capital of neighbouring Serbia, from where they are accused of masterminding a conspiracy to infiltrate fighters among Montenegrin police and security personnel on election night and cause bloodshed that would lead to a takeover by the pro-Russian opposition.

Their aim, it was alleged, was to capture or kill the then prime minister, Milo Djukanovic, who is credited with orchestrating Montenegro’s NATO application, and replace him with a Russian crony.

“We face an aggressive power which initiated this (plot) to stop the expansion of NATO,” thundered Djukanovic, who has since stepped down in favour of a close confidant, amid speculation he is contemplating a run for the presidency.

The Kremlin has warned Montenegro against joining the alliance but denies any involvement in the plot, which has led to the arrest of 20 people there and in Serbia.

Western officials, however, see the episode as a further sign of Putin’s determination to use a mixture of soft and hard power in Europe to weaken democratic governments and test Western resolve by expanding Moscow’s zone of influence.

A source in the Montenegrin cabinet claims the paramilitary groups and the attempted coup are part of an “unequivocal message” from the Kremlin that amounts to: “We are back and you belong to us.” The EU, he claims, has given up on integrating the Balkans because of concerns about migration, leaving a vacuum that Putin sees as an “open invitation”.

Montenegro’s prosecutors initially charged Aleksandar Sindjelic, a convicted criminal from Serbia who fought with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, with leading the coup. He has since been declared a “protected witness” so he can testify against the Russians.

Sindjelic, who was deported from Serbia to Montenegro in dubious legal circumstances, told prosecutors of his links to the Russian defence ministry; he also recalled how the two Russian agents had hosted him in a luxury apartment in central Moscow and gave him €200,000 ($283,000) in cash to prepare logistics.

A cache of weapons was found in Serbia, from where the Russians operated, but Montenegro’s authorities failed to link it to the alleged coup. With no weapons yet found in Montenegro, prosecutors are being ridiculed by opposition and critics in the media who claim the plot was invented by Djukanovic.

The revelations have embarrassed Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s pro-Western Prime Minister, who is said to have known nothing about the plot, even though his secret service reportedly was aware of it.

Serbia, which maintains military neutrality but aspires to join the EU, has steered a pro-Western course since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic, its former leader and a staunch Moscow ally who died while on trial for war crimes in the conflicts that raged through the region in the 90s.

“The secret service monitored the Russians throughout their operation but Vucic was never told,” said a top Montenegrin government source who has been working with Serbian authorities. “When he found out he was furious … Serbia’s Prime Minister does not have his secret services under control.”

Asked about the plot during a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels late last month, Vucic appeared to want to send a message to Russia. “Serbia will never be a stage for preparing criminal acts against other countries,” he said. During the visit Vucic sought help to combat the Kremlin’s “enormous pressure”, diplomats say.

Days after the story of the alleged coup attempt emerged, Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s security council and a close aide of Putin, arrived on a sudden visit to Belgrade, offering an informal deal on security co-operation. Diplomats and local officials described the visit as “crisis management”.

NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg has pledged not to accept “any interference” in Montenegro’s accession to NATO, which needs the ratification of all 28 member states.

“I welcome the open investigation both in Montenegro and Serbia related to the attempted … coup,” he said during Vucic’s visit last month, urging alliance members to speed up the ratification process.

NATO officials had hoped the process could be completed before Trump took office next month, but the US Senate failed to ratify it before its legislative session ended last week. Trump’s admiration for Putin has alarmed Western #officials but delighted pro-Russian activists in the Balkans.

“The election of Donald Trump was a blessing — as if God extended his hand over us,” said Krivokapic, voicing hopes the new president will strike a deal with Putin and abandon the Balkans to Russia.

Continued.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Putin makes his Balkan move...good thing nothing bad has ever happened with Russians egging on Serb nationalism

NATO In Panic. Putin and Lukashenko arming Serbia for the coming Balkan war. Says this pro gov paper in #Serbia.

This headline, which some thought was alarmist, makes much more sense now.

Serbia wants to annex part of #Kosovo using '#Crimea model': president
http://reut.rs/2jhcN0q

Albanians aren't Belgians. Their tolerance for Putin-backed Serb provocations will be limited. Get ready for fireworks, peeps.

[OUTLAW 09]

“New troubles in the Balkans”
https://medium.com/@pmakela1/new-tro...c1#.xr5fezbmg#

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"Bosnian Serb leader wants U.S. ambassador declared persona non grata"
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-bo...ldNews&rpc=69#

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“Balkan autumn” VS “Russian spring” — how Russia tried to hold on to the Balkans in 2016:
https://informnapalm.org/en/balkan-a...kans-in-2016/#

[OUTLAW 09]

US Imposes Sanctions on Bosnian Serb Leader #Dodik
https://nyti.ms/2jWbm6H

[OUTLAW 09]

Next to be destabilized by Putin: NATO member Romania? Putin’s Old Moldova Map Alarms Romania
http://ln.is/balkaninsight.com/U8TSm#

IT was not "an accident" Putin gave the new proRussian Moldavian President a 17th century map of Moldavia which included portions of Ukraine and Romania.....

Moldavia is under massive internal stress as the election was a fraud with hundreds of thousands of paper ballots not delivered to the Moldavian embassies around the world for Moldavians to vote....and there was major voter fraud recorded inside Moldavia...with the ballots of entire anti Russian voting districts "lost" enroute to official counting...

[OUTLAW 09]

Russians came in as journos to visit military base in Albania, got kicked out as spies.
http://top-channel.tv/lajme/artikull.php?id=345891#tab#

Mod's Note: Link has unexplained footage and text not in English. It has little merit.