Of
Tobias Zick
As if further proof was needed that the Kremlin views the invasion of Ukraine as part of something larger, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made a remark in an interview just before it began that, one may assume, was everything else than was thoughtless. There are “claims,” Lavrov said, albeit without distancing himself from these claims, let alone naming their origins, “that mercenaries are being recruited from Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to take them to Donbass and other nations to to destabilize Russia”. The governments of the three countries mentioned immediately felt compelled to reject the nebulous allegations – that alone is a sign that Lavrov’s words had the intended effect: stirring up unrest and tensions in the Balkans.