Moscow 'closely monitoring' situation in Kosovo after gunmen-police standoff
A police officer was killed in the attack in north Kosovo
Russia on Monday (September 25) said it was closely monitoring the "potentially dangerous" situation that developed in Kosovo over the weekend where ethnic Serb gunmen engaged in a violent gunfight with the local authorities.
"The situation is extremely difficult. On Kosovo, we see a traditionally biased attitude towards the Serbs...The situation is very, very tense and potentially dangerous, we are monitoring it very closely," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted as saying by news agencyReuters.
Moscow does not recognise Kosovo (a former province of Serbia)as an independent country which has a majority ethnic Albanian population. Traditionally, Russia sides with and supports Serbia, with which it has close religious and cultural ties.
Over two decades after a Kosovo Albanian guerrilla uprising against repressive Serbian rule, some 50,000 Serbs in the northern region of Kosovo refuse to accept the 2008 declaration of independence and continue to regard Belgrade as their capital - often leading to such escalations.
Watch | Standoff between gunmen and Kosovo authorities at monastery ends
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What happened in Kosovo?
On Sunday (September 24), Serbian gunmen in armoured vehicles stormed a village in north Kosovo, battling police before barricading themselves in a monastery.
The Serbian Orthodox monastery is near the village of Banjska in the Serb-majority region, where monks and pilgrims hid inside a temple as ashootout followed.
It was late in the evening that the Kosovar police managed to pin the gunmen and retake the monastery.
The police saidan officer and three gunmen had lost their lives.
"We put this territory under control. It was done after several consecutive battles," Xhelal Svecla, the Minister of Internal Affairs, told reporters.
Prime Minister Albin Kurti called the ambush an act of terrorism and condemned the Serbian government for it.
"Organised crime with political, financial and logistical support from officials in Belgrade is attacking our country," he wrote on social media.
Later, Serbian state media outlet RTS reported that Jarinje and Brnjak border crossings between Serbia and Kosovo were shut down.
The situation between the two countries remains frosty. According to The Guardian, talks between Kosovo and Serbia, which were brokered by the European Union, have reached a dead end.
Kurti, in a conversation with the outlet, defined the latest unsuccessful meeting between him and the Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić, which took place on September 14, as a fiasco and said that the EU special envoy, Miroslav Lajčák, had “lost neutrality”.
(With inputs from agencies)
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