Lavrov: Instead of forming association, Berlin and Paris propose new initiative

Lavrov has said the agreement for the Association of Communities with the Serb Majority and Minsk Accords “envision the same rights for Serbs in Kosovo and Russians in Donbas”.

The Russian minister commemorated the European Union's High Representative for Foreign Policy and Security Josep Borrell's words that Russians have nothing to ask for in the Balkans and that all Moscow's contacts with Serbia and other Balkan countries should be completely interrupted.

He has said that in 2013, in Brussels, with the EU's mediation, the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo signed a document to form the Association of Serb-run municipalities.

“Anyway, no one wants to do that. The EU has already realised that Albanians in Pristina have already publicly warned that they will not. The EU has already shown powerless. France and Germany swallowed up the insult and proposed a new initiative that gives no rights to Serbs in Kosovo, but demands from Belgrade: you do not want to recognise Kosovo's independence, you are not obliged, only accept that Kosovo, which you do not know, enters international organisations, including the UN, the Council of Europe, etc.”, has claimed.

Lavrov has stressed that the rights of Serbs in Kosovo are defined with the Association Agreement.

The document says the same thing about the Association of Serb-run municipalities as in the Minsk Accords, only that in Kosovo's case it was about the rights of Serbs, while in Minsk's agreements on Russian rights in Donbas. The same rights were envisioned as in the Minsk accords: the right of language, Russian education, the right to form its own police, the right to vote in the appointment of judges, the right to preferential economic ties with neighbouring regions”, concludes Lavrov, not to mention that it was due to Donbas and the surrounding regions Russia began the bloody war in Ukraine that followed numerous war crimes and against humanity.