The battle for Kosovo continues

Vojislav Kostunica visited “Serbian Jerusalem”

Yesterday, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica visited the UN-administered province of Kosovo. He met with leaders of the Serbian community and took part in a service at an Orthodox monastery in Gracanica. The trip was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo. On June 28, 1389, on the day of St. Vitus (in Serbian - Vidovdan), the squads of the Serbian prince Lazar put up heroic resistance to the numerically superior troops of the Turkish Sultan Murad I, but were defeated, and Serbia became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire.

The fact that the battle, sacredly revered by the Serbs, took place on territory that the West is now ready to put at the complete disposal of the local Albanians gives Vojislav Kostunica’s current visit a truly sacred connotation. The rector of the Kosovo diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Bishop Artemie of Rasko-Prizren, yesterday called Kosovo the “spiritual and cultural cradle” of the Serbs, the “Serbian Jerusalem”: “All Serbia is a temple, and Kosovo is the altar of this temple.”

The head of the Serbian government said that his visit to Gracanica gave him the opportunity to “reiterate what every Serb should know: Kosovo has always been and will always remain part of Serbia.” It is clear that this statement is addressed not so much to the Serbs as to the international community, which intends to decide on the final status of the region by the end of the year. According to Vremya Novostei, the West is ready to grant independence to Kosovo, without fear that this step will serve as an example for numerous self-proclaimed states throughout the Eurasian space, including Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Serbia, as Vojislav Kostunica confirmed yesterday, stands for a compromise solution based on granting the region broad autonomy.

The Albanian leaders of Kosovo tried in every possible way to distance themselves from the visit of the Serbian prime minister, although the arrival of government officials from neighboring Albania to the region is always arranged as solemnly as possible. Prime Minister of Kosovo Agim Ceku noted with dissatisfaction that permission for Kostunica to enter Kosovo was given by the UN Mission, and emphasized that his Serbian colleague arrived in the region “on a private visit as a citizen.” A number of extremist groups of Kosovo Albanians the day before threatened to block the Kosovo border and not let the Serbian leader through. Enhanced security measures have been introduced in the region to prevent incidents. Additional peacekeeping checkpoints, reinforced with tanks and armored vehicles, appeared around Pristina, a few kilometers south of which the Gracanica monastery is located.

The Battle of Kosovo (Gračanica is located on the territory of this intermountain basin) is considered in the Serbian tradition to be the most striking event, a manifestation of the heroism and sacrifice of the Serbian people. The feat of Milos Obilic, who was later canonized as a saint, is covered in legends, stabbing Murad I to death with a sword right in the Sultan’s tent. The defeat of the Serbs in the Battle of Kosovo had tragic consequences for the entire Balkan region, says Slavenko Terzic, an expert at the Institute of History of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. In a conversation with Vremya Novostey, he recalled that the Ottoman yoke dealt “a severe blow to the rich heritage of the Christian peoples of the Balkans. Their political, social and cultural elite were liquidated, medieval cities, Orthodox churches and other cultural monuments were destroyed.” The tragedy of the situation was enhanced by the fact that the arrival of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans “meant the contact of the Balkan peoples not with the high achievements of the Arab Muslim civilization, but with the militarized branch of Islam,” our interlocutor noted.

“The consciousness of the Serbs has been mythologized by Vidovdan and Kosovo,” says Deputy Director of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences Andrei Shemyakin. In a conversation with VN, he noted that the West, which is trying to lead the Kosovo settlement process today, “will never understand this Serbian mythologized consciousness.” “That is why all negotiations on the fate of Kosovo in their current form are doomed to failure. The Serbs will never recognize the independence of the region and will consider the actions of the West annexation,” the expert is convinced. From a historical point of view, Kosovo truly represents the cradle of Serbian statehood and Orthodox culture. “And if it is taken away from the Serbs, they will never admit it, and they will be right,” says Mr. Shemyakin. “The Serbs can be forced to give up Kosovo, but it is impossible to convince them to agree to this. In 1908-1909 they were forced to recognize the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina announced by Austria-Hungary. But the situation in Kosovo is more dramatic for the Serbs. If Russia, within the framework of the international Contact Group or the UN Security Council, supports the independence of Kosovo, then the relations of the Serbs with the Russians will be crossed out. The Serbs are ready for dialogue with Europe, ready to join the European Union, but there is a threshold that they will not cross. And anyone who recognizes the independence of Kosovo will instantly find himself an outcast among the Serbs,” VN’s interlocutor emphasized.

Petr ISKENDEROV