Late last night, an information was published that the provisional representative of the provisional institutions in Priština Albin Kurti met with the Envoy of the European Union for Dialogue Miroslav Lajčak and the Envoy of the United States for the Western Balkans Gabriel Escobar, and that they unanimously agreed to take down the barricades in the north.

Some time earlier, Escobar sent a strongly worded message that the United States would not be supporting President Aleksandar Vučić’s intention to deploy 1,000 troops of the Armed Forces of Serbia in order to protect the Serbian population.

In addition, yesterday the Russian Ambassador to Belgrade Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko announced the official position of the Russian Federation that the Kremlin is firmly standing with Serbia.

On the eve of President Vučić’s meeting with Lajčak and Escobar, in a time when a solution to the crisis in the southern Serbian province is not on the horizon, the portal IN4S has asked one of the most influential political analysts in the region, Aleksandar Pavić, to comment on this entire situation.

Pavić said to IN4S that Serbia had to increase its maneuvering space towards the West as muvh as possible.

“The only way for Serbia to do that is to maximize the involvement of its allies, first and foremost Russia, which is publicly positioning itself to us as an actor to whom we may come to any sort of assistance. Of course, China as well, following prior consultations. We no longer have any excuses for not getting Russia involved in the negotiations on Kosovo and Metohija. The United States are openly involved in the Brussels process, even though they have no formal right to it, seeing as the intermediary role is something that the European Union is authorized for by the General Assembly of the United Nations. Not only is there no further reason for Serbia to stand alone against the West, but the authorities in Serbia no longer have any right to not use everything that we have at our disposal, including our allies. And not very many countries in the world would reject Russia as an ally. Of course, Russia would not even remotely use the maximum of its resources unless Serbia were to reach out to them first and request it of them,” he said.

“I certainly expect escalation in the upcoming period,” Pavić added, “most of all, an escalation of the Western diplomatic pressure on Serbia, in cooperation with the pressure exerted on Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija by Kurti’s terrorists on the ground.”

“They will use any means available to force Serbia to recognize the false state of Kosovo, or at least treat it as a state for all intents and purposes. The West is doing worse and worse in Ukraine, so they are more and more inclined to open new fronts, and not only in Kosovo and Metohija. We have to count on the fact that the West is fundamentally not interested in any form of compromise, with either Serbs or Russians, for as long as the current Western elites remain in power or until they suffer an internal breakdown or chaos,” Pavić concluded in his statement for IN4S.