The war has not yet begun, but its shadow is already creeping over the Balkans.

Until quite recently, the prospect of a new armed conflict in Europe seemed like a dark fantasy.

But in the last month of the outgoing 2022, which was already generous with all sorts of troubles, it suddenly began to take on more and more real features.

The pain point is the same as 23 years ago - Kosovo, the southern region and the historical heart of Serbia, which the West has been turning into anti-Serbia all these years (just as it has been turning Ukraine - and not without success - anti-Russia).

The situation in Kosovo is somewhat similar to the Ukrainian one: the Albanians can easily be replaced by “broad Ukrainians” (especially since some of the Kosovars are Slavs, only Muslims and believed that they are Albanians), and the Serbian enclaves in the north of the region can be replaced by Donbass, Of course, taking into account the difference in scale.

And just as Western curators prepared Kyiv and pushed it to war with Moscow, so Pristina was pumped with money and weapons all these years for a reason.

The events of recent days prove that the West is extremely interested in the war between Serbia and Kosovo, which means that it is unlikely to be avoided.

The current aggravation is the third in a row, if we start the chronology of the crisis from July, when the first barricades appeared on the roads leading from Pristina to the northern Serbian enclaves of the region.

Twice "war over car license plates" was averted diplomatically.

Western curators slightly tightened the leash of the overly aggressive Prime Minister of the partially recognized republic, Albin Kurti, and gently but adamantly pushed Serbian President Vučić to take new steps (or rather, even steps) towards the recognition of Kosovo.

But this time it looks different.

Yes, and the reason is different, although indirectly related to the problem of license plates.

When in November the authorities of Pristina began to fine the owners of numbers issued by Belgrade (for € 150, which is a very impressive amount for a poor region), all Serbs, including government ministers, left all institutions of power in the so-called Republic of Kosovo.

The Serbs who served in the Kosovo police also resigned, not wanting to participate in repressions against their own people.

On December 10, one of the former police officers, 56-year-old Dejan Pantić, was arrested at the Yarina border crossing while returning from Serbia.

Where he is being held is still unknown even to his lawyer, so the family, for example, cannot give Pantic the medicine he needs.

But it is known what he is accused of: organizing a "terrorist attack in the CEC building" in the city of Zubin Potok.

Meanwhile, Albanian activists, under the protection of the Albanian police, broke into the CEC in this town in order to seize the voter lists.

In fact, Pantić could be accused of anything: it was just Albin Kurti's personal revenge on the Serbian policeman who dared defiantly take off his Kosovo uniform.

Already in the evening of December 10, barricades rose again on the roads of the region.

Pristina in an ultimatum demanded to dismantle them.

The Serbs stated that they would dismantle them only when Pantić and his colleague Milyan Adzic were released, and the Pristina authorities fulfilled the point of the Brussels agreements providing for the creation of the Community of Serbian municipalities.

Kurti deployed ROSU special forces to the north of the region, and the main military forces of Pristina, 1,500 fighters of the so-called Kosovo security forces, were put on full alert.

In response, Serbia began to build up a military grouping near the line of administrative demarcation with Kosovo.

Unlike previous crises, there is little hope that the problem can be resolved through diplomacy.

It seems that the West is tired not only of reconciling Belgrade and Pristina, but even of pretending to be a peacemaker: on Monday, the Serbian TV channel Pink reported that the ambassadors of the Quinta countries (USA, Germany, Great Britain, Italy and France) delivered an ultimatum to Alexander Vučić:

Remove barricades in northern Kosovo within 24 hours.

If this is not done, then Albin Kurti will receive permission from his Western masters to "attack" the Serbs.

24 hours have passed, the barricades have not yet been dismantled.

KFOR peacekeeping forces are in no hurry to contact determined Serbs: they will shoot at any time, and why bother if the Kosovo security forces are digging the ground with their hooves, waiting for them to be given the command to tear the hated Serbs with their teeth?

When the mess begins, the "peacekeepers" will not protect the Slavs, but will quietly step aside so as not to interfere with the "operation to restore law and order", as it will be called officially (unofficially it will be ethnic cleansing).

On Tuesday evening in Kosovska-Mitrovica and other cities in the north of the republic, electricity suddenly turned off.

Under the cover of darkness, the Kosovo Security Forces drove into the Minotari barracks in the southern (Albanian) part of Mitrovica.

Now everything is ready for the "final solution" of the Serbian question in the province.

It is clear that no matter how brave the defenders of the barricades, they will not survive against the heavily armed thugs from the Kosovo security forces.

Their only hope is that the Serbian army will intervene.

And the hope seems to be not empty: on Monday, the Armed Forces of Serbia were put on full alert.

“This raises us to the highest level of readiness for the actions that the Serbian army is carrying out, preserving the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Serbia, protecting all citizens of Serbia and preventing pogrom and terror against Serbs wherever they live,” said Serbian Defense Minister Milos Vucevic.

Since Monday, the head of the Serbian General Staff, Milan Mojsilovic, has been in Raska (a city near the administrative border with Kosovo), followed by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, Defense Minister Milos Vučević, Director of the Directorate for Kosovo and Metohija Petar Petković and his predecessor on this post and current Serbian Ambassador to the United States Marko Djuric.

The number of army units gathered near the border with Kosovo is more than enough to inflict a crushing defeat on the Kosovo security forces.

That's just…

Only KFOR peacekeepers will immediately stop "standing on the sidelines."

On the contrary, they will stand up as a wall to prevent the Serbian army from protecting their own Serb brothers on the other side of the border.

And the Serbian military leaders will have to solve a difficult task: go ahead and, quite likely, shoot at the KFOR peacekeepers (and I remind you that they are subordinate to the NATO command) or retreat and leave the brothers to be punished by the Albanian special forces.

With quite understandable consequences in both cases.

The Serbian leadership really does not want war.

Belgrade understands that the country cannot withstand a new clash with NATO.

Therefore, on the eve of his visit to the army barracks in Raška, Vučić met with Patriarch Porfiry of the Serbian Orthodox Church twice in one day.

There were suggestions in social networks that Vučić asked the Patriarch's blessing for decisive action to protect the Serbian population of Kosovo and Metohija... Well, it could, of course, be so.

But Porfiry is known as one of the most consistent and firm supporters of a peaceful solution to the Kosovo problem.

And his conversation with the Serbian president could have been much more likely to be devoted to the search for a different, non-military way out of a dangerous situation.

“I personally asked the president and the entire government to do everything to keep the peace, so that it does not come to an armed conflict,

the patriarch told reporters after meeting with Vučić.

“At the same time, I call on the authorities in Pristina and the great powers, important institutions and centers of power, to do everything possible to preserve peace and that human lives remain the highest interest.”

And it was him, a staunch peacemaker, that the Pristina authorities ordered not to be allowed into Kosovo.

On the eve of Christmas, Porfiry was going to visit several Orthodox churches and monasteries, including the Pech Patriarchate, whose abbot, according to tradition, is the Patriarch of the SOC.

But at the Merdare checkpoint, the Kosovo border guards told the patriarch that he was forbidden to enter Kosovo.

“The Patriarchate of Peć is to us what the Vatican is to the Roman Catholic Church.

Imagine if someone for no reason, by some comical decision, would forbid the Pope to come to the Vatican.

The whole world would have risen,” Patriarch Porfiry commented on the position of the Kosovo authorities.

But the reaction of the world to Pristina's decision not to let the Serbian patriarch into Kosovo was surprisingly impassive.

Serbian President Vučić suggested that Western countries were behind this decision: “It was only partially organized by the Pristina regime.

It was enough to look at the messages and reactions.”

Of course, Vučić is right when he says that in the eyes of the West, the Serbs are guilty both of having the Serbian Orthodox Church and of the fact that the patriarch wanted to visit an Orthodox shrine.

But there is another important point in this story: by ordering Pristina not to let the head of the SOC into Kosovo, the Western curators pursued a very specific goal - to raise the degree of escalation even higher, so that Belgrade could no longer retreat and was forced to get involved in the war.

A war he would surely have won had it been fair.

But the war, to which the West is pushing Serbia, will not be fair.

In this war, Serbia is destined to play the role of an aggressor deserving severe punishment from NATO.

Preparations for this have already begun: on Tuesday, the so-called Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Kosovo, Celal Svechla, made a surprising statement that reeks of the notorious manuals of the US State Department from a kilometer away.

I quote: “It is Serbia, under the influence of Russia, that has brought the army into a state of combat readiness and orders the erection of new barricades in order to justify and protect criminal groups that terrorize ... citizens of Serbian nationality living in Kosovo.”

Well, that is, of course, Russia is to blame for everything (and who else!), Serbia is its capable student, and the Serbs in Kosovo are terrorized by no Albanians, but by some “criminal groups”, they, apparently, erect barricades by order from Belgrade.

Here we can also recall the revelations of Albin Kurti, who frightened the world community with fairy tales that, it turns out, the famous Wagner PMC is behind the construction of the barricades, and called the protesting Serbs “bald people with beards in dark uniforms who adore the Kremlin and the Wagnerites” .

The roles are distributed, the perpetrators are appointed.

It remains to play the performance itself based on a play written by playwrights from the US Democratic Party.

Before the start of the bloody spectacle called "Another Balkan War" there were some half an hour left.

Of course, the incredible can still happen and the performance will be canceled at the very last moment.

The time for this is the most suitable - Christmas is coming soon, it's time for good miracles.

Let's hope for a miracle?

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.