Guterres condemns the attacks against KFOR in Kosovo and points out that they are doing “what they can to calm the situation”

June 1 () –

The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, has condemned this Wednesday the violent attacks registered in recent days in the northern region of Kosovo with a Serb majority, in which 30 members of the NATO Mission in Kosovo (KFOR) and fifty Kosovar Serb demonstrators were injured.

“We continue to express our concern about the situation there and condemn the violence we have witnessed,” Guterres’s spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, explained at a press conference.

Dujarric, in turn, has indicated that the United Nations representative who is in the region “continues to do what she can to calm the situation.”

Following the incidents, NATO announced the deployment of an additional 700 troops from the Operating Reserve Forces (ORF) to the Western Balkans. The Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, also expressed his condemnation of the “unprovoked” attacks: “They are unacceptable and must stop,” he said, stressing that these cases of violence represent a setback for Kosovo and its Euro-Atlantic aspirations. .

The latest incidents stem from the local elections on April 23, in which the Serb community, the majority in the northern part of Kosovo, called for abstention. Turnout was 3.4 percent in the four Serb-majority municipalities. The inauguration of the new authorities has generated clashes that have once again put Pristina and Belgrade on guard, but also their international partners.