Serbian President Aleksander Vucic ordered to raise the state of combat readiness of the armed forces and put them on high alert. He also ordered his army commander to head to the border with Kosovo, amid escalating tension between the two countries over the prevention of transit movement at border points.
On Monday evening, Serbian Defense Minister Milos Vucevic said in a statement that the president had ordered the army to be at the highest level of combat readiness, "that is, at the level of readiness to use armed force."
The Serbian Chief of Staff, General Milan Moiselovic, said on Sunday that the President had ordered him to go to the border area with Kosovo, noting that "the situation there is difficult and complicated."
He stressed that it was necessary for the "Serbian army to be present along the administrative line", the term used by the Serbian authorities to refer to the border line with Kosovo.
For its part, the Serbian Interior Ministry said Monday evening that "all units" of the Internal Security Forces "will be placed immediately under the command of the Chief of the General Staff."
The Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic warned last week that the situation in Kosovo is "on the brink of armed conflict", and her warning came while the Serb minority in northern Kosovo was setting up roadblocks in the context of tension that erupted months ago with the Pristina authorities.
armed attack
And last Sunday, the media reported that a "clash" occurred when the Kosovo forces tried to remove a barrier, but the Kosovo police denied, in a post on Facebook, that its forces were involved in any armed clash.
The Kosovo Interior Minister, Hilal Svikla, confirmed that a patrol of the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo (KFOR), which operates under the leadership of NATO, was subjected to an armed attack.
For its part, "Kfour" said that it had opened an investigation into "an indirect shooting incident that occurred on December 25 near a Kfour-NATO patrol, in which an unknown number of gunmen were involved."
Tension flared up between Serbia and Kosovo when Pristina set December 18 as the date for local elections in municipalities with a Serb majority, but the most prominent Serbian political party announced its boycott of it, but the series of recent events prompted Kosovo to postpone the elections until April 23, 2023.
Kosovo is a former Serbian province with a majority of Albanians and declared its independence in 2008. It was recognized by the United States and most European Union countries, but it did not receive recognition from Belgrade.