Rastovic on Troccaz's appointment: The more special envoys for the Balkans, the worse the situation in the region becomes

Historian Dr. Aleksandar Rastovic, speaking to Kosovo Online, says that the appointment of French envoy for the Balkans, Rene Troccaz, doesn't offer much hope for objectivity in his approach. He emphasizes that we should not overlook the fact that Troccaz was an advisor to Bernard Kouchner, who has never had a favorable attitude towards Serbs.

Rastovic says that a large number of countries, including the US, Germany, Great Britain, and now France, have appointed special envoys for the Western Balkans, and the situation is worsening with an increasing number of these envoys. This, he believes, is a significant paradox.

"I fear that this is another game played by great powers to divert attention from the failures of NATO countries in Ukraine and to justify these failures to their domestic audiences by pompously appointing diplomatic representatives for the Balkans. This would shift the focus away from Ukraine, with the intention of transferring the war turmoil here, which would be a catastrophe for all the peoples of the Balkans," Rastovic says.

He reminds us that Balkan wars have not been localized and concentrated in a narrow area.

"It always tends to expand over time to other countries and peoples; history teaches us that this happened in the past. Balkan conflicts have never been of a purely local nature; they have always spread and taken on the character of wider regional, even European, and global wars. So, I'm afraid this is just a smokescreen for the domestic audience of these countries, which have become deeply involved in a special operation in Ukraine and are now trying to stoke instability and war turmoil in the Balkans to somehow salvage their reputation and justify the enormous financial resources paid by taxpayers of those countries, which they invested in military operations in Ukraine," Rastovic says.

He adds that the fact that the new envoy of the French Government for the Western Balkans was an advisor to Bernard Kouchner, who, as he says, did not "shine brightly" in the former Yugoslavia, speaks volumes.

"I will remind you of Kouchner's role in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Doctors Without Borders where the Serbian side was accused of all the world's evils. Then his role later in justifying war crimes against the Serbs in Croatia during the war Operation 'Storm' in 1995, his role in Kosovo was unclear in the organ trafficking in northern Albania. All of this cannot convince us that the intentions of the new envoy, who was Kouchner's advisor, are honorable and will be directed towards the objective treatment of both the Serbs and the Albanians in this region," he said.

He emphasizes that as a historian, he is very skeptical "about this kind of mediation or intermediation, especially when it comes to a personality who was an advisor to Kouchner".