No trace of Wagner in Kosovo after Prigozhin’s death

2023-09-23 14:00:15

Some Kosovar government sources They talk about gradual disappearance and “vigilant calm”; others, of “rout“Be that as it may, it is not detected pro-Serb nationalist agitation on Kosovo’s northern border and the areas with a majority similar to Belgrade in that Balkan country. Not since the death of the owner of Wagner, Yevgeni Prigozhinwhich is now one month old, and the gradual dismantling of his mercenaries.

They have disappeared in the tense área fronteriza de Jarinje the signs of the campaign of agitation, heated with the participation of Wagner agents, which at the end of last May altered the climate in the area with attacks on the soldiers of the NATO KFOR mission, leaving 90 soldiers injured of the Atlantic Alliance.

This absence of incidents has striking simultaneities. The calm was observed from the end of June, while Progozhin’s militiamen revolted against Moscow, and until the end of August, when there was the death of the oligarch and his staff when the plane in which they were traveling from Moscow to Saint Petersburg crashed.

During the subsequent month of mourning for Wagner and his followers, Kosovo security forces certify the absence of agitators of the mercenary company on the border.

Since last January, its presence was noticed in the growing disturbances of the ‘license plate war’, the streak of tension that began in August 2022, when The Kosovo Serb population in the north refused to accept the traffic regulations of the Government of Pristina and maintained their regulations, identity cards and license plates issued by Belgrade.

Agitation

So, one propaganda campaign It was revived in various social networks frequented by the French, Spanish, British, Italian, Scandinavian and Eastern countries extreme right. His narrative: The churches and Christians of Mitrovica and its region were in dangerattacked by Islam.

The ukrainian war It was evolving while 1,300 kilometers south of Odessa, in the Balkans, Russia threatened to open another front. Kosovo intelligence then detected the presence of men wearing paramilitary clothing and Wagner symbols. between pro-Serb protesters and in the altercations following protest rallies.

Some of these agitators put on a symbolless jacket to cover their Wagner badges when they assumed the role of interlocutors with the KFOR command, which ordered them to stop the altercations. The presence of these individuals was recorded in photos like the one illustrated in this information.

In the Jarinje area “a group of Serbian far-right extremists tried to violate police facilities. According to the information we have, The organizer of that protest was Damjan Knezaevic“, the Serbian Minister of the Interior tells EL PERIÓDICO, Jelal Svechla.

Knezevic is the head of a Serbian ultranationalist group, the Narodna Partola. (People’s Patrols). A month before, had visited Wagner’s headquarters in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg, a luxurious building now closed.

In Belgrade, not too many years ago, the wolf cubs of the People’s Patrols began harassing immigrants in the streets. Once the war in Ukraine began, the Wagner group became the object of his fascination. This year, these young people already attended the Jarinje riots as a violent faction, after a alleged instruction of Wagner agents in the surroundings of the airport in the Serbian city of Nis, indicate other Kosovo intelligence sources.

Delinquency

The tense calm in northern Kosovo may be influenced by “the fatigue of the population, tired of being mobilized,” indicates a source close to the Kosovo defense forces. In Pristina, the Government is not trusted. His advisors interpret that Aleksandar Vucic, the Serbian presidentsurrounded by an insistent and noisy street opposition, “may be tempted to divert attention with new tensions on the border“, fears the same source.

As in most areas where there has been a destabilizing intervention by Wagner agents (in Sahel countries, for example), the absence of stable security has meant that the Serbian-majority northern area of ​​Kosovo and its border exterior have been turned into a criminal islandan area conducive to organized crime activities.

For some reason, in the Mitrovica strip towards the northern border with Serbia, despite the depopulation to which the war and post-war tension has subjected it since 1999, Electrical energy consumption has shot up to 70%. The non-payment in the area has already cost the Government of Pristina 320 million euros in electricity bills and 17.3 million in water bills.

Related news

There are two activities in the underworld that consume a lot of light and not a little water: marijuana cultivation and the blockchain. Throughout the year, Kosovo security forces have dismantled 16 drug plantations and laboratories and six cybernetic farms, dedicated to the cryptocurrency mining, as confirmed to EL PERIÓDICO by the Kosovo Ministry of the Interior. The value of the material seized in police raids amounts to 40 million of euros.

The same sources suspect that, perhaps, the license plate crisis was not fueled only by traffic regulations and nationalism. The gradual Kosovo police presence in the north added fuel to the fire: that is bad for the drug and cryptomining business.