📩 Kosovo-Serbia relations in 2025

DEAR READER,

Last week was packed with so many major events, it almost seems impossible for us to highlight one. Probably the biggest one, however, was Assad's regime crumbling in Syria. After rumors of his plane crashing near Homs, which drew a record number of viewers on FlightRadar24, Assad reappeared in Moscow. The Kremlin has just announced that Assad and his family have been granted asylum.

While Syria is not in our region of expertise, the situation shows how Russian alliances often end. And Russia is not doing well. Despite recent gains, it is clear that Russia's been struggling in Ukraine. In a Truth Social post, the US president-elect, Donald Trump, claimed that Russian losses have reached 600,000 soldiers. Unrest is also brewing in Russian-occupied Abkhazia, where protesters stormed the parliament and forced the resignation of the de facto president. In response, Russia cut financial aid totalling 1.8 billion roubles (around $18 million USD). In Georgia, protests continue with no clear path in sight, and Yanukovych-style crackdowns seem increasingly likely. Meanwhile in Lithuania, the ongoing investigation of the DHL plane crash has still not ruled out sabotage.

On to this week's expert opinion. An explosion damaged a water canal in Kosovo last week. The Prime Minister blamed Serbian nationalists. With this latest development in mind, coupled with upcoming elections in Kosovo, we decided to ask Nicholas Kulawiak, English-language Editor at Kosovo 2.0 what is going on in the country. He offers insights into Kosovo-Serbia relations and what we might expect as we approach 2025.

Enjoy reading this week’s “brief”!

— Giorgi Beroshvili, Editor

2025 may be an inflection point for the tangled relations, or lack thereof, between Kosovo and Serbia. Donald Trump’s return to the White House carries the potential for sweeping changes in U.S. foreign policy. His isolationist instincts may be further fueled by billionaire oddball Elon Musk’s efforts to slash what he deems wasteful government spending in areas like diplomacy and development aid. Meanwhile, in Brussels, a new European Commission could recalibrate the EU’s approach to facilitating the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, which Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti and some European Parliament members have called biased in Serbia’s favor. 

And in Kosovo, on November 29, an aqueduct in the country’s north was hit on by an explosion that Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti labeled a “criminal and terrorist attack” for which Serbia was responsible. The EU condemned this “terrorist attack” too, and although Serbia denied culpability, Kosovo quickly arrested eight suspects, most of whom had ties to a local Serb group, and confiscated uniforms and weaponry.

All this comes as Kosovo heads for an election on February 9. Kosovars will weigh whether to reelect current Prime Minister Albin Kurti and his party, Vetëvendosje. Four years ago, Kurti won the largest electoral victory in Kosovo’s history, but his term has been marred by legislative challenges, rocky relations with the EU and U.S. and recurring questions about how to create an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, something that Kosovo agreed to in the 2013 Brussels Agreement but that has scant public support among the electorate. Indeed, opposition to the association was among the issues that shaped Vetëvendosje’s evolution from grassroots protest movement to mainstream political party. 

The EU-facilitated dialogue has not produced a meaningful result since the March 2023 Ohrid Agreement, a roadmap for implementing commitments made during the dialogue. Neither Kurti nor Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić actually signed it, but EU High Representative Josep Borrell announced that it had been approved nonetheless. Much has happened in Kosovo and Serbia since then, none of it likely to have a favorable impact on the dialogue. 

In September 2023, Serb paramilitaries who Kosovo’s government says were backed by Belgrade carried out an attack— called a “terror attack” in a resolution passed by the European Parliament — on Kosovo Police in northern Kosovo, killing one officer. Vučić’s ruling Serbian Progressive Party won snap elections in December 2023, in conditions the OSCE reported were “unjust” for the opposition. Nonetheless, Vučić has racked up foreign policy wins with the West, scoring deals for French fighter jets and lithium supply to the EU, all while not imposing sanctions on Russia following its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and thanking Russian President Vladimir Putin for continued energy supply. 

Kosovo, meanwhile, came under EU and U.S. sanctions in mid-2023 for not deescalating relations between the central government in Prishtina and Kosovo’s ethnic Serb minority effectively enough. Frustration with Kurti in Washington and Brussels has only increased since then, due to what the EU termed a “continued lack of coordination” on how to handle topics like parallel Serbian state institutions in Kosovo and reopening the main bridge in the divided city of Mitrovica for vehicle traffic. In August 2024, the U.S. ambassador to Kosovo remarked that the quality of the U.S.’ partnership with Kosovo “is not what we would hope.”

The confluence of these events — a new U.S. administration, new EU commission, and potential new government in Kosovo — offers each of the relevant parties, plus Serbia too, an opportunity for a fresh start in the year to come. Will that happen? Time will tell.

— Nicholas Kulawiak, English-language Editor at Kosovo 2.0

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