Hill: Open Balkan creates good neighborliness and facilitates movement across borders

The American Ambassador to Serbia, Christopher Hill, said in Skopje that the Open Balkan initiative created a sense of good neighborliness and that this initiative did not divide borders, but united them and made them open, which was especially important in the Western Balkans.

At today's conference "Regional security challenges and events in the countries of the Western Balkans" organized by the Presidential Center for Political Education, Hill indicated that the purpose of the Open Balkan was to create a sense of community and ways of functioning with neighbors.

"The Open Balkan creates good neighborliness and facilitates the flow of movement across borders. The point of the initiative is to create a way of cooperation with the neighbors," Ambassador Hill said, after which he mentioned the dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo, as well as the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as the biggest regional challenges at the moment.

When asked if there was hope to bring American optimism to the Balkans, he replied that he thought that optimism existed.

"Honestly, if you go to the US, you might face some other things in that area. But honestly, I was here in 1996 and there was not much reason to feel very optimistic, and look at what is happening in this period," he said and added that people had their expectations, and when the level of expectations was raised, then the level of optimism was lower.

Hill believes that Russia's leadership, as he said, "led civilization into the forest."

"Such leadership in Russia has led civilization into the forest. The tragedy is what they did to Ukraine, a huge tragedy, but also a huge tragedy that they did to themselves. We have to, and when I say we, I'm talking about the US and its allies, we have to be the winners, we have to be clear that you must not attack your neighbor and kill your neighbor's children. This is very emotional, but there are things we need to be clear about and ready to deal with until we win," Ambassador Hill said.