Why do the United States support the idea of border correction? Who's behind?

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeii has been busy with North Korea, Iran and now the crisis that caused Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi to disappear. American politics in Central and Eastern Europe is thus left in the hands of an academic who only had no experience in American diplomacy a year before appointment.

Since he became assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs in last autumn, A. Wes Mitchell has ignored Obama's era policy, which put the focus on human rights violations in countries like Hungary, in favour of a policy that views these regional authoritarian governments as potential partners.

Logic, some say, is that we better have a way of getting these countries out of Russian influence. Others worry that re-agement with these governments ends up empowering idealologists who believe they are dealing with similar administrations.

State Department refused to let Mitchell interview.

Mitchell is a political appointer, but his experience has nothing to do with politics. Before coming to the State Department, he was part of the Centre for European Policy Analysis. [ Footnote] CEPA], an inefficient research organisation in Washington that focuses on Central and Eastern Europe, but also on Russia. He has been part of that institution since 2006, first as director of research and later as its president.

He has also served on advisory boards at institutes from the region, including the Slovak Atlantic Commission and the Prague Centre for Transatlantic Relations. He speaks German and took his doctorate to political science from Berlin Free University. In short, he has built his career from research, thinking and writing about Europe, and especially Central and Eastern Europe.

Mitchell was confirmed by the Senate at the end of 2017. He was brought not from Pompeii but from his predecessor, Rex Tillerson.

Having the chief preoccupied with bigger issues, he has undoubtedly become the chief diplomat in the Trump administration who deals exclusively with Europe and Eurasia, a region that through his academic experience has turned into some kind of geopolitical chess table.

Take, for example, Hungary, which in recent years has held back civil society organisations, independent media, migration and those who would offer help to them and to asylum seekers and who have publicly fought the European Union and George Soros, Hungary-born billionaire.

Under Obama, sanctions were imposed on six individuals associated with the government for activities perceived by the US as undermining democracy. The sanctions are said to be the work of Mitchell's predecessor, Victoria Nuland.

From 2012, there have been no meetings between Obama administration officials and high-level Hungarian government officials -- a policy that continued in the Trump administration. In November 2017, the Stock Exchange of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the Trump State Department announced that 700 thousand dollars were offered to help citizens increase “in the target information about internal and global issues in Hungary. ”

But then, at the end of May 2018, that changed. This country's Foreign Minister, Peter Szijarto, came to Washington and met with State Secretary Pompeii and national security adviser John Bolton. Jzijarto gave Mitchell credit for the change. “He was able to push forward, with his political power, a certain change in this regard,” he told BuzzFed News at the time.

By July, the State Department had cancelled the announcement of granting to independent media and said the money could be used elsewhere. Sources who knew about the issue in question said the plan was broken even before the winner was resolved.

Others speculated that this change was due to Mr. Mitchell and Hungary CEPA had received 25 thousand dollars in return from the Hungarian government in 2017. While some took it as a natural link between the likes, the anti-imgration government of Orban and the Trump administration.

But a European diplomat in Washington aware of the decision to meet Szijjarton said the movement had more to do with Russia than with immigration.

At the end of 2017, Ukraine passed a law banning the learning of minority languages. The law was said to have addressed Russia but also affected Hungarian learning about the considerable Hungarian minority in Ukraine. During 2018, tensions between Ukraine and Hungary increased, leaving the Western leaders concerned that Budapest, now friendly with Moscow, would disrupt affairs with the EU on sanctions against Russia for its involvement in Ukraine and block Ukraine's membership in the EU and NATO.

Thus, Mitchell had arranged meetings between Szijarto and Pompeii and Bolton.

Neither the Hungarian Embassy in Washington nor the State Department commented on why these meetings were arranged.

“If Washington wants to stop Budapest from going to Moscow, then the thought comes, then he has to bring Budapest to Washington.

But human rights activists argue that although the strategy sounds practical, it has not worked better than the administration's strategy to ignore Hungary's top officials.

The things have become even worse,” said Zselyke Csacky, research director for Europe and Eurasian at Freedom House. He referred to the September meeting between Russian President Putin and Hungarian Orban in September, and the fact that on October 4th Hungary and Ukraine had expelled diplomats from each other.

If the United States really wants to fight Russian and Chinese influence, the best way to do it is to make sure that the states of Eastern and Central Europe are strong and with living democracy,” she added. “Russia has the chance to ruin the game because institutions are weak and light to maneuver. ”

In Congress, too, some wonder if Mitchell's strategy is really that strategic. Marcy Kaptur, Democrat from Ohio, sent him a letter asking why the grant to the media was canceled.

Hungary is not the only place Mitchell has changed politics for. It also, some sources say, supports the possibility that Serbia and Kosovo exchange territories or border corrections. Serbian President Aleksandar Vuciq has now long pushed ahead such an idea as the policy of partition. Vuciki himself is also criticised as an aspiring to become authoritarian; in September, he told Serbs in Kosovo that Slobodan Milosevic was Serbia's <x0rider.” Milosevic is widely considered responsible for war crimes and major bloodshed in the Balkans in the 90th, including the campaign against Kosovo Albanians, and was even under trial for war crimes in The Hague, where he died in 2006.

For many years, conversations about border changes or exchange territories were prohibited by Americans, with concern that a border movement in the Balkans would bring even more violence to Kosovo. There were also concerns that a possible change of borders would move others in the region to do so, in particular Milorad Dodik, the Serbian nationalist leader in Bosnia seeking the division of the Bosnian Serb part, and who won presidential seats this month.

Michelle's not alone in supporting such an agreement, Bolton has said so publicly. And unlike Hungary's case, Mitchell is not considered the most responsible man for this political shift.

What I can say is that when Mr. Mitchell, the involvement of the United States in the Balkans has intensified efforts to confront the challenges this region faces. It seems that the United States is willing to hear options from both sides on how to move forward, and reach an agreement that would bring long-term stability to the region,” wrote a Kosovo diplomat for BuzzFeed News on an email.

Diplomatic sources said the United States has communicated to Kosovo that they have a specific deadline for making agreements, no one knows what the EU will look like in a year or two, and Kosovars themselves realise such a situation in which Serbia refuses to accept the country's independence is unstable.

A country where the strategic race has dramatically intensified is the eastern part of Europe,” said Mitchell in a speech in June. Our “Priority has been, first and heavier, to bring Russian aggression under control. ”

And some think that a possible exchange of territory in Kosovo is the idea that Mitchell is using geopolitical to counter Russia.

Russia's Stategjia is to set itself up in continuing contradictions in the region to cause unstable ... it holds strong reports with Serbia in part because Serbia is still keeping Kosovo destabilised and blocking its path to Europe,” says Charles Kupchan, senior official in the Council for Foreign Relations.

If you remove that obstacle and Serbia sees its path to the EU and Nato ) that would be a bad thing for the Kremlin,” he said.

But others think that partitioning is a holiday for more chaos, which is exactly why Putin and Serbian President Vuciq have opted for it. Prime Minister Haradinaj has told BuzFed News that Moscow's lack of opposition to the plan is proof that partition is not a solution. /BuzFed/Translating into Albanian, Periscope