Nothing is going well between Belgrade and Pristina.

The Serbian army said it placed its troops on heightened alert on Monday evening, a situation which underlines recent tensions in neighboring Kosovo where shootings and explosions took place and where roadblocks were erected.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has ordered his army 'to be at the highest level of combat readiness, that is, at the level of the use of armed force', Serbian minister says Defense, Milos Vucevic.

General Milan Mojsilovic, head of the Serbian armies, was also dispatched to the border with Kosovo.

Some 120,000 Serbs in Kosovo

“The situation there is complicated,” the chief of staff told Pink television on Sunday evening, en route to Raska, ten kilometers from the border.

He added that it required “the presence of the Serbian army along the administrative line”, a term used by the Serbian authorities to designate the border with Kosovo.

Serbia does not recognize the independence of its former southern province, populated overwhelmingly by Albanians, which it proclaimed in 2008. It thus encourages the 120,000 Serbs in Kosovo to challenge the local authorities.

Several hundred Serbs have erected roadblocks since December 10 in northern Kosovo to protest against the arrest of a former Serbian policeman, paralyzing traffic to two border crossings.

A NATO mission on the spot

Shortly before General Mojsilovic's departure for the border area, several Serbian media posted a video on social networks, in which gunshots can be heard, claiming that it was "fighting" that took place in the early evening when Kosovar forces tried to dismantle a barricade.

This was immediately denied by the Kosovo police who said on their Facebook page that their members had not participated in any exchange of fire.

The media in Pristina, on the other hand, claimed that a patrol of the Kosovo Peacekeeping Force (Kfor), a NATO mission, was in the firing zone.

The Kosovar Interior Minister, Xhelal Svecla, for his part indicated that the Kfor patrol had been attacked.

For its part, Kfor announced that it would investigate shootings “on December 25, near a patrol of the NATO mission in Kosovo”.

"There were no injuries or material damage," she said.

At the beginning of November, hundreds of Serb police officers integrated into the Kosovo police, as well as judges, prosecutors and other civil servants left their posts en masse, in protest against a decision, and now suspended by the Pristina government, to ban Serbs who live in Kosovo to use license plates issued by Serbia.

The situation with Kosovo is "on the brink of armed conflict", Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic had also estimated last week.

World

Serbia: At least 51 people poisoned after an ammonia leak

World

Kosovo: Convicted of war crimes, a former rebel commander receives 26 years in prison

  • World

  • Kosovo

  • Serbia

  • Army