The largest arsenal of Serbian militias seized in Kosovo since the end of the war

2023-09-26 15:42:44

Thirty-six individual anti-tank rocket launchers (seven of them hit), eight anti-personnel mines, eight anti-tank mines, 88 mortar projectiles,… From the Kosovo warin June 1999, such a large arsenal had not been intervened in that Balkan republic. Since that date, it has been the “most important seizure by far” of war weapons, an advisor to the Kosovo Government tells EL PERIÓDICO.

The armed attack last Sunday morning, a police patrol ambushed on a bridge in the town of Spain the region of Mitrovica, has opened up questions about the true state of what until last weekend the Kosovo Ministry of the Interior called “watchful calm“.

Peace is once again proving very precarious in that area of ​​the Balkans, a crucial point of friction between the Russian world and the NATO world. But not only peace, also, it seems, security that provides the NATO KFOR missionthis time dramatically revealed.

The list

Once the attack and subsequent entrenchment of 30 armed men in a monastery was resolved – with the death of one police officer and four assailants – the Government of Kosovo has shown the media the surprising dimension of the weapons seized. The list is long: there are 115 combat uniforms with the Serbian flag sewn into the shoulder pads, 20 kilos of TNT military explosive and 5.5 kilos of plastic explosive, 23 electric detonators, 150 dynamite cartridges, 309 fusiles kalashnikov AK37six sniper rifles, six revolvers, six heavy machine guns, 235 assault rifle magazines, 21 bulletproof vests, 16 night vision devices, three drones, 32 radio transmitters and 32 mobile phones, in addition to Serbian and Kosovo money, tools, masks and other tools of all kinds.

The Kosovar security forces have even seized 24 4×4 vehicles and even one armored vehicle. And these last two details raise even more doubts about the security breaches that KFOR suffers in the area. The cars, according to the first police investigations, they cloned license plates of vehicles belonging to that NATO mission. They also had the initials of the mission labeled.

All this material was not only in the Orthodox monastery in which the attackers barricaded themselves; also in nearby houses whose owners are being investigated by the Kosovo police. Sunday’s attack consisted of a very numerous shooting and from different points firing, even with anti-tank rockets, but so many military supplies are not only useful for an act of these characteristics. Evidence is emerging that these weapons warehouses were kept for many more armed actions or, perhaps, to support a guerrilla offensive (or openly warlike) in every way.

The authorship

In the midst of the confusion that still surrounds the case, some certainties emerge: the absence – also striking – of support among the population of Mitrovica for this attack, according to Kosovar sources, as well as suspicions with the same origin, as among the paramilitaries who managed to flee. from the place of the events by the nearby mountains is Milan Radojicic, vice president of the Serbian List.

That party is the main party of the Kosovo Serb population in northern Kosovo, and Radojicic is now its main leader. He former leader of Serbian List, Oliver Ivanovic, was murdered without the authorship having yet been clarified. Kosovo police believe Radojicic could be refugee -and wounded– in a hospital in a part of Serbia bordering Bosnia.

This attack, which could still jeopardize peace in the area, took place after a summer in which the security forces of the Kosovo Social Democratic Government Albin Kurti they would have verified the absence of mercenaries from the company Wagner on the northern border with Serbia, which had been stirring up riots last winter and spring.

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After the rebellion against Vladimir Putin and his generalship by Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of Wagner, and his subsequent death in a plane crash, the agents of the private military company could not be seen in the area. What has not disappeared from the place are the Kosovo Serb militiamen and Serbian ultras which, according to Pristina, Wagner trained in the Serbian city of Nis, under the guise of international aid workers.

Other police investigations have been launched in northern Kosovo to confirm or rule out the existence of more warehouses with war weaponswhich could point to other scenarios that complicate peace in the area.