Serbia

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo have rejected a demand from Serbia that its security forces be allowed to return to the breakaway province amid ongoing tensions, Serbia’s president said Sunday.

The KFOR peacekeepers, who deployed in Kosovo in 1999 after the NATO alliance’s bombing forced the Serbian army and police out of the territory, said in their response that there’s no need for the return of the Serbian forces, President Aleksandar Vucic said.

BELGRADE, Jan 6 (NNN-PRENSA LATINA) — The president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, claimed that nine more nations withdrew their recognition of Kosovo’s independence.    

According to Vucic, the new ones are: Somalia, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Eswatini, Libya, Guinea, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Lucia and Maldives.

We are small, but as things stand in the world, up to 106 countries do not recognize Kosovo’s independence.

BELGRADE, December 31. /TASS/: Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic thanked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for greetings on the upcoming New Year holidays, according to the Serbian leader’s interview with the Prva TV channel.

"Yes, he [Russian President Vladimir Putin] congratulated me, tomorrow Russian envoy to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko will pass these greetings to me. He insisted that he would give it to me before the end of this year. Thanks to him [the Russian president] for the greetings," Vucic said.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic said late Wednesday that Serbs will start removing their barricades in Kosovo on Thursday in a move that could deescalate tensions that triggered fears of new clashes in the Balkans.

The agreement was reached at a late-night crisis meeting with the leaders of Kosovo Serbs, Vucic said.

MERDARE, Kosovo, Dec 28 (Reuters) - Kosovo closed its biggest border crossing with Serbia on Wednesday after protesters blocked it on the Serbian side to support their ethnic kin in Kosovo in refusing to recognise the country's independence.

Tensions between Belgrade and Pristina have been running high since last month when representatives of ethnic Serbs in the north of Kosovo left state institutions including the police and judiciary over the Kosovo government's decision to replace Serbian issued car licence plates.

BELGRADE, December 20. /TASS/: Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has asked Stuart Munsch, the commander of Allied Joint Force Command in Naples, to provide NATO protection to the Serb population in Kosovo and Metohija.

"It was good talking to Admiral Munsch. I asked NATO to defend our people in KiM and thanked for the understanding of Serbia’s policy of neutrality," the president said on Instagram (banned in Russia as it’s owned by Meta Corporation, which is designated as extremist in Russia) on Tuesday after meeting with the admiral.

BELGRADE, December 12./TASS/: Serbia urges the EU member countries that do not recognize the independence of Kosovo to prevent Pristina from submitting an application for European Union membership on December 15, Serbia’s First Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said on Monday.

"We are working on this, to urge all EU member nations that have not recognized Kosovo to contest this issue from the point of view of status, that is [from the point of view] that there are no necessary conditions to discuss this," Dacic told the Tanjug news agency.

BELGRADE, December 11. /TASS/: Prime Minister of the unrecognized republic of Kosovo Albin Kurti has demanded the Serbs remove barricades in northern Kosovo by Sunday evening, the Vecherne Novosti (Evening News) newspaper reported.

Tehran (ISNA) - Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian met with Serbia’s Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management Jelena Tanasković as he continued his visit to the European country.

Amir-Abdollahian was briefed by Ms. Tanasković on the expanding cooperation between Tehran and Belgrade in the field of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management and the views of the Serbian official about ways of boosting relations.

BELGRADE, December 5. /TASS/: Russia has never exerted any kind of pressure on Serbia and it maintains a friendly dialogue with it at the highest level, Russia’s ambassador to Belgrade, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, said on Monday.

Earlier, Botsan-Kharchenko warned of what he described as "deplorable socio-economic consequences of the European elites’ short-sighted policies: from rising prices and energy shortages to the actual de-industrialization of Europe," which led a number of Serbian opposition media to draw erroneous conclusions about pressure on Serbia.