But, yes: From the 15th November, the Russian state channel “Russia Today” started broadcasting online, in Serbian! The news was announced by its editor-in-chief Margarita Simonjan: “We launched RT in the Balkans. Because Kosovo is Serbia”! – it was the same reasoning as the inscription on some Serbian highway bridges in the direction of our country. After all, Rama and Vucic are selling us “Open Balkan” as a project that we are already seeing the benefits of!
Author: SELADIN XHEZAIRI
Two days after the start of online broadcasting, in Serbian, of the Russian state channel “Russia Today”, a new round of the Vučić-Rama-Kovačevski ‘troika’ dedicated to the “Open Balkans” was held in Belgrade, an initiative that has strained the already respectable relations in the region: the initiative is strongly opposed by Kosovo, while it has also become a bone of contention in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Polarization-frictions in South-Eastern Europe, if viewed from the prism of geopolitical developments on the international level, seem to reflect the Balkan whims for protagonist, which in essence reflect the divisions for consolidating alliances to “clear the accounts” of the big ones at the expense of the weakest.
From this point of view, it seems that those who put the “Open Balkans” under the lense, when they calculate the pluses and minuses for the authors of the initiative of this Balkan ’trojka’, are right, underlining without any doubt that it is Aleksandar Vučić’s Serbia that what “To get maximum from nothing”: Through the “Open Balkans”, official Belgrade is trying to “remake” the “Serbian world” according to the “Russian World”, using the Serbian Orthodox Church as a measure, which they are stretching with great, without any obstacles its influence all over the Balkans.
The developments in Ukraine, the changes in the White House, as well as in Germany, seem to have shown up sobered even the high-profile politicians in the West, who do not seem to know the quirks of their homologues in the Balkans. Precisely for this reason, perhaps, at the beginning of November, the “Berlin Process” was reactivated, pushing the “Open Balkans” to the background”.
This was also seen by the absence of Serbian President Vučić at the Berlin summit and the decision of German Chancellor Scholz that his continuation should take place neither in Belgrade nor in Skopje, but in Tirana! If the speculations are true, the West (EU & USA) with the support they gave to “Open Balkans” actually wanted to try the policy of carrot and stick for the spoiled politicians from the region that they will know how to appreciate their (dis)listening!
And, when it was expected that with the election of the new government of Serbian President Vučić, the latter would give up the two seats, when it was expected that the policy of his country would be harmonized with that of the European Union and the United States of America, last Tuesday, with the Serbian “Amin”, the Russian state channel “Russia Today” (RT) started broadcasting online, in Serbian! The news was announced on Twitter by the editor-in-chief of “Russia Today” Margarita Simonyan. Her reasoning and message was short and very clear “We launched RT in the Balkans. Because Kosovo is Serbia”! That’s all Simonjan wrote for everyone to understand.
Beyond that, the presence of Prime Ministers Edi Rama and Dimitar Kovacevski, at Thursday’s summit in Belgrade, seemed to prove that they do not give a damn about calls from Brussels and Washington that they will no longer tolerate Vučić’s stay in two chairs. This is because it is not that in essence there is any tangible result of its own kind from the “Open Balkans”. If it were not so, then there would be no problems like “number plates, identification documents, long waits, for goods and people, at the border points”…
If Vucic, Rama and Kovacevski beat their chests that they and no one else have the “Open Balkans”, they must confirm this with deeds. This is because we do not find the declarative commitments of this initiative in the criteria for EU or NATO accession, or in the CEFTA documents, in the goals of the Council for Regional Cooperation. Paper endures a lot and a lot, they say even in Serbia. Belgrade is increasingly implementing the historic Serbian objective of access to the sea, through Montenegro and Albania. This aspiration seems to have hit a snag in Podgorica, while in Tirana it seems that it takes time to “translate” it. The Tenth Corridor from Serbia through North Macedonia to Greece is well circulated. For This 8TH continues to be talked about and talked about …. But, yes: From the 15th, the Russian state channel “Russia Today” started broadcasting online, in Serbian! The news was announced by its editor-in-chief Margarita Simonjan: “We launched RT in the Balkans. Because Kosovo is Serbia”! – it was the same reasoning as the inscription on some Serbian highway bridges in the direction of our country. After all, Rama and Vucic are selling us “Open Balkan” as a project that we are already seeing the benefits of!