DISINFO: Serbia-Kosovo agreement is actually an extortion
SUMMARY
Serbia reached an agreement with Kosovo, but it’s unclear if it can be called ‘agreement’, ‘negotiation’, ‘dialogue’, as the EU and Mr. Borrell always do, or it should be called ‘extortion’. Because Serbia’s president said that he won’t recognise Kosovo, either mutually or at the UN, but he also said that Serbia received a lot of pressures in this negotiations or to sign a document on this agreement. If they didn’t agree, they won’t receive funds or its EU membership would be questioned. This is the EU diplomacy lately: union and extortion.
RESPONSE
This is a deliberate distortion of facts, part of a wider pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign about Kosovo, aiming to undermine the European Union’s mediation efforts in this conflict by portraying them under a negative light.
The European Union presented both sides with a proposal for normalisation of relations between Serbia and Kosovo, to which both of them agreed on principle. Further meetings between Kosovar and Serbian leaders are scheduled to specify the details on the implementation of the plan.
In contrast to what this disinformation story implies, the EU document doesn’t call for Serbia to recognize Kosovo, and in fact Serbian leadership has been adamant on his rejection of some aspects of the plan, such as Kosovo’s admission to the UN. Therefore, the EU’s mediation hardly qualifies as “extortion”.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that NATO deliberately worsens the situation in Kosovo to blackmail Serbia as it did with the Maidan in Ukraine, that Kosovo’s EU application is a breach of the Washington agreement, that the EU wants to expand its imperialism in the Balkans or that the West is an accomplice of the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Kosovo.