Kosovo goes to the polls on Sunday in an election that could mark a crossroads in the young country’s history and even determine its future territorial integrity in an increasingly hostile world.
With the election outcome very much in the balance, the prime minister, Albin Kurti, held a mass rally in Pristina on Friday evening, under the slogan “From corner to corner”. It celebrated the fact that Kurti has succeeded where his predecessors had failed, in tightening the control of the Albanian-majority government over a rebellious Serb area on its northern border.
That sense of hard-won territorial integrity appears increasingly vulnerable however. While Kurti did not mention Donald Trump by name, his presence hung over the rally on the freezing Pristina night.
While every national capital has been watching the words and actions of an ever more mercurial US president since his return to the White House, Kosovo has more at stake than most. The last Trump administration backed a plan which at some point involved Kosovo’s partition, and one of his officials has already begun assailing Kurti on social media.
The nation of 1.6 million people declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after a US-led Nato force helped it prevail in a liberation war. But 17 years on, it is still not a UN or EU member state as a result of the refusal of Serbia, Russia, China and some European states to recognise its independence.
Kosovo’s ethnically Serb minority is variously estimated as 4% to 8% of the population, and many remain loyal to Belgrade rather than Pristina. Its most significant stronghold is in the north side of the town of Mitrovica near the Serbian border, which was a no-go area for the government until the past two years in which Kurti succeeded in deploying Kosovo police, shutting down parallel institutions, and enforcing the use of the euro over the Serbian dinar.
Kurti’s critics inside and outside Kosovo say these gains in sovereignty have been imposed on the Serb minority, rather than being a result of winning it over, leaving the frozen conflict unresolved. In particular, the prime minister has been rebuked by the EU and successive administrations in Washington for his refusal to implement an autonomy package for majority Serb municipalities.
Kurti’s party, Vetëvendosje, won an absolute majority four years ago on a programme that combined social democracy, anti-corruption and fierce Albanian patriotism. The name means “self-determination”, and Friday night’s rally was awash with bright red Albanian flags, dotted with a small handful of Kosovo’s national flag. That emblem, which hangs outside Kurti’s office in Pristina, is a compromise, portraying Kosovo’s geographical outline and some white stars on a blue background, shorn of historical and ethnic overtones.
The Albanian flag is, Kurti said, “something of a long tradition that continues”.
Speaking to the Guardian on Saturday, the prime minister said he had every reason to believe that Kosovo-US relations would remain as strong as ever.
“We have enhanced our cooperation with the US during our tenure. It used to be mainly diplomatic, and we have added defence and development,” Kurti said.
However, Richard Grenell, who was special envoy for Serbia and Kosovo in the first Trump administration, tweeted on Friday that Kurti’s optimism on where he stood with Washington was “delusional”.
“Relations have never been lower,” said Grenell, who a few days earlier had said Kurti’s government was “not trustworthy”.
In the first Trump administration, Grenell pushed a peace plan that would have involved Kosovo’s ceding northern Mitrovica as part of a land swap deal. Grenell also served for a while as acting director of national intelligence four years ago, but his title this time round is “presidential envoy for special missions”. It is not clear whether the Balkans will be one of those missions.
Perilous years lie ahead
Washington is not Kurti’s only geopolitical headache however. His premiership has also been marked by friction with the EU, which imposed punitive measures on Kosovo for his alleged recalcitrance. The measures inhibiting new European funding have cost Kosovo €150m, according to one estimate by the Reuters news agency. They date back to 2023 when Kurti installed ethnic Albanian mayors in Mitrovica and other Serb municipalities, triggering Serb riots, in which nearly 100 Nato peacekeepers were wounded.
Kurti and many analysts argue it was unfair to punish Kosovo and not Serbia, despite evidence that the riots were encouraged by the Serbian government of Aleksandar Vučić.
Vučić also escaped US and EU censure for his refusal to sign a 2023 agreement on moves Kosovo and Serbia were to take towards normalising their relations, and failing to fulfil his undertaking not to oppose Kosovo’s membership of international organisations.
Kurti has said he will not consider a law on Serb municipal authority or rejoin talks with Belgrade until Serbia takes steps to remedy its obstructive actions. The main opposition parties standing on Sunday say they will be more flexible and will re-enter normalisation talks without preconditions.
“I would like to see Kosovo go back to the table with the EU and United States,” said Haki Abazi, who was once Kurti’s deputy prime minister but has recently joined one of the smaller opposition parties, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo.
“If Kurti remains in power, I think what we’re going to see is the US basically acting swiftly against him by pulling out its troops from Camp Bondsteel [Nato peacekeeping headquarters in Kosovo] and also imposing sanctions to the point where Kurti is going to be blacklisted.”
Unemployment has been radically reduced under the current government, which has raised the minimum wage and achieved economic growth above the regional average. But unease is growing over the the lack of progress towards normalisation of diplomatic relations, and so are fears about the country’s vulnerability.
Ramadan Ilazi, head of research at the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies, argues that Kosovo would be in a stronger position now if it had passed the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities (ASM) law.
“If we are concerned about potential plans for partitioning Kosovo, especially fears now amplified under a Trump administration, then establishing ASM would have been a way to prevent any kind of other solutions about the North,” Ilazi said.
Kurti said he did not think Vučić would dare try to re-establish control over northern Kosovo by force, unless put under pressure from Moscow to act.
“Vučić is not a leader who would go to war with Nato,” the prime minister said on Saturday. “However, one thing that we should be wary about is if he gets an order from Putin. Will he say no? I don’t think so.”
Opinion polls ahead of Sunday’s election suggested that Kurti’s Vetëvendosje would fall short of its resounding majority four years ago, though historically polling in Kosovo has not proved particularly reliable. If he does fall short, the prime minister said on Saturday he was not interested in a coalition with any of the major opposition parties. But those parties too have a history of bitter rivalry, and would also face significant obstacles to forming a stable coalition.
Whatever the election outcome, said Alex Anderson, a British-born Kosovo citizen and political analyst, the coming months and years are going to be some of the most perilous for the country since independence.
“We could well see a lot of very dangerous things happen for Kosovo over the next few years, maybe even including the withdrawal of Americans from Camp Bondsteel,” Anderson said. “That would leave Kosovo feeling very vulnerable.”
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