Serbian Defense Minister: Podgorica and Skopje will pay the price for recognizing Kosovo

(Patria) - Serbian Defense Minister and president of the ruling Serbian Progressive Party, Miloš Vučević, said that Montenegro and North Macedonia have wronged Serbia by recognizing Kosovo's independence, emphasizing that this is interference in the country's internal affairs, Montenegrin media report.

- You have wronged and you will pay the price for it, just as everyone who promoted Kosovo as an independent state is paying the price in Ukraine. You have opened Pandora's box. Your bureaucratic answers that Kosovo is sui generis, that it is a special case, are ridiculous. Neither Albin Kurti nor Tirana believes that - Vučević told TV Pink.

He believes that there is significant international support for the creation of Greater Albania and that this is not just an issue for Serbia, but also for its neighbors.

- Are our friends in North Macedonia sleeping peacefully? Are you sleeping peacefully? They think they are in NATO and have solved their problems in time... This is the mantra of both Montenegro and North Macedonia.

When they became members of this collective security, i.e., the NATO alliance, they thought they had solved all their problems and that nothing could happen to them anymore. You have to look at history, at slightly different circumstances, and at what is happening in their backyard.

We do not want to conduct their policy, that is their issue. But we can state that 25 percent of Albanians have 50 percent of the power in North Macedonia.

If that is okay with Macedonians, then it is okay for us, obviously, to have a policy that will not see Macedonia as their country - he said.

Vučević believes that there is an all-Albanian consensus for pan-national unification, and that "naive Serbs think that this cannot happen and that there will be no border changes".

- The mantra that there are no border changes has always been valid, and then they changed. I would not sleep peacefully, but that is an issue for Skopje, and Podgorica should also see carefully what it will do.

I see that the biggest issue for them now is whether Serbian parties, or a Serbian party, or a coalition, dare to enter the government with, conditionally speaking, some small ministries.

In North Macedonia, 25 percent of Albanians have 50 percent of the power, and in Montenegro, 30 percent of Serbs cannot have two or one ministry. They say we are interfering in internal affairs.

You are interfering in our internal affairs – you recognized Kosovo, is there any worse, more indecent, and more open interference in internal affairs - Vučević states.

Vučević became the president of Vučić's party after the current president of Serbia withdrew from that position at the end of May.

Vučević was the mayor of Novi Sad from 2012 to October 2022, when he replaced Nebojša Stefanović as head of the Ministry of Defense.