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Zelensky's statement about war in the Balkans/ Pelesi: There is a truth

2023-11-18 15:04:00, Aktualitet CNA

Zelensky's statement about war in the Balkans/ Pelesi: There is a truth

Minister of Defense, Niko Peleshi

The Minister of Defense, Niko Peleshi, has commented on the statement of the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, about the alarm that there will be a war in the Balkans.

Peleshi has expressed that he does not believe that this is the context in which Zelensky spoke, but there is a truth that after the Russian aggression in Ukraine, the geopolitical situation, stability has been hit.

Furthermore, the minister emphasized that, in regions such as the Western Balkans, there are dormant conflicts and the risk of reawakening them.

Peleshi also underlined the fact that there are positive developments in the Balkans, since three of the six countries of the Western Balkans are members of NATO, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, while Kosovo is an aspiring country to be integrated into the Euro-Atlantic structures.

Pelesi said that the entire Western Balkans wants to become part of the EU.

" I don't believe that this is the context, but there is a truth that after the Russian aggression in Ukraine, the geopolitical situation, the stability has been hit. We have a return to what we did not think would happen in the politics of the spheres of influence, the conventional war that seemed as if it would never happen again, but the Russian aggression in Ukraine brought it back, and this has brought with it the shock of many balances.

Meanwhile, in regions such as the Western Balkans, there are dormant conflicts and the risk of reawakening these conflicts. There are definitely positive developments in recent years in the Western Balkans because three of the six Western Balkan countries are members of NATO, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro. Kosovo is an aspiring country to be integrated into Euro-Atlantic structures.

The entire Western Balkans wants to become part of the EU, there are also countries like Serbia that consider themselves neutral countries, they do not aspire to integrate into NATO, which if it were so, the Western Balkans would be a stable country where we all we would be part of a NATO alliance and the border with the threatening East would be clearly defined. We are not in that reality, so we are constantly interested and concerned about the developments in Ukraine because we have seen that after the war in Ukraine some foci of tension have been reactivated.

We have the aggression of September 24 in Banjska, an aggression that deserves to be called terrorist that also resulted in the loss of life of a Kosovo police officer. So all these are signs of not a big enough threat to talk about a war, but still we definitely need to be attentive. The balances have changed.

Albania as a NATO country on the one hand, but also as a country with a policy of rapid modernization of the Armed Forces, of increasing defense capacities, is one of the first countries in NATO that with this budget reaches 2% of the product gross internal in the coming year, which gives us more opportunities to modernize not to prepare for war because we do not think this scenario has a negligible probability due to the presence of NATO in the region.

Even in Kosovo, which is not a NATO member country, NATO is present with KFOR. So there is a very strong guarantee that this region cannot be affected, but in any case, today's defense in NATO's philosophy is realized through deterrence.

The more NATO and each of its allies, including Albania and other countries of the Western Balkans, is strengthened politically and militarily through the increase of capacities, the modernization of the Armed Forces, the higher we push the worst scenarios.

The world is changing, Albania is moving towards a rapid integration into the EU. The European Union, the union in that family and the union in the Euro-Atlantic structures is the long-term guarantee for the Western Balkans," said Peleshi./ CNA