"Unjust" Mitsotakis towards Serbia

Not even five months have passed since my article entitled "Are we going to sell the Serbs now?", and it seems that the prophecy is unfortunately coming true. During the recent vote on the accession of Kosovo and Metohija to the Council of Europe, Greece for the first time, unlike Cyprus, who voted against it, chose the unfair path of abstention. Kyriakos Mitsotakis proved himself capable of this shameless injustice against a nation, perhaps the only one on the planet, with which the Greeks have a brotherly, not just friendly, relationship.

I wrote in that article, which was translated into Serbian and published in the media of the neighboring country, that during the two world wars, the Greeks and the Serbs, side by side, had really stood on the right side of history. Just as, unlike the other Balkans who had generously offered their services to the Reich, they had been those people who had been constantly a thorn in the side of imperial and later Nazi Germany.

The Greeks love the Serbs and they proved it when the Serbs, helpless and isolated, were called to defend their homeland from the KLA robbers and the modern NATO barbarians, who mercilessly bombarded them at the end of the 90s. And the Serbs, for their part, have never forgotten this help. I saw this with my own eyes when I visited Bosnia and Kosovo and Metohija several times during the Yugoslav crisis. At the border crossings, even the most hardened, gunpowder-stained Serbian warriors would suddenly soften at the sight of a Greek passport. Their faces would literally light up.

"Come in and drink a Serbian plum brandy," they would tell me. "Because if it weren't for you Greeks, we would put coal in our cars instead of gasoline...".

For the Serbs today, the issue of Kosovo and Metohija is an existential issue. Besides defending the cradle of their historical and religious heritage, maintaining the international status of "non-recognition" of Kosovo's hybrid state is the only weapon of defense against Albanian expansionism that is constantly showing its teeth in the Balkans. Today, there are only five EU member states that do not recognize Kosovo as a sovereign and independent state. Among them is Greece, and of course Cyprus, for understandable national reasons.

However, the Greek attitude began to show cracks, even though the "prime minister" and "president" of the marauding state, which recently, with the encouragement of the Germans and the Americans, also applied for EU membership, were repeatedly photographed with engravings of "Greater Albania" reaching as far as Preveza, including Corfu! Instead of putting them in line for an unsavory joke about "Greater Albania", Mitsotakis does not miss the opportunity to flirt with the cheeky Rama, while, for no apparent reason, the number of visits by Greek government envoys to Pristina has increased. From Pacis (New Democracy MP recently accused of corruption) to Mendoni (Minister of Culture in the Mitsotakis government).

I wrote in that article last December that if he were to consider changing Greece's stable policy of non-recognition of Kosovo in order to ingratiate himself with the Germans, Mitsotakis would be committing a national humiliation and an unprecedented disrespect for the feelings of the vast majority of the Greek people. Just like he did with the delivery of weapons to Ukraine. At the same time, however, he would succeed in irreversibly disrupting relations with the only ally in the combustible Balkan neighborhood.

The Prime Minister of Serbia, hearing the news about the Greek "injustice" in the Council of Europe, canceled her participation in the Delphi Forum, the provincial version of the Greek Davos, which is of a semi-official nature because it is held under the auspices of the Greek president. Almost at the same time, Serbian Special Forces canceled their participation in the international military exercise "Orion" organized by the Greek Ministry of Defense, while President Vucic spoke bitterly about the countries that unpleasantly surprised Serbia with their behavior during the disputed vote. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ivica Dacic, in a tweet, thanked his former colleague Katrougalos and Syriza for taking a different position from Mitsotakis's government.

Anyone who knows how to read these moves understands that the anxiety of the Serbs is great. What remains unclear is what kind of compensation and benefit Mr. Mitsotakis secured for this turn. And at whose expense? Greece or his own? It is generally known that the Germans are interested in the integration of Kosovo into European collective structures at any cost because they believe that this serves their geostrategic aspirations. One of the main questions that a Deutsche Welle journalist asked Alexis Tsipras during his recent visit to Germany was whether, in case he became prime minister, he would recognize Kosovo! Tsipras avoided the trap with a general wording, but it seems that the current prime minister made promises to the German side, and perhaps to the American side, which is also interested in the European perspective of all Albanians.

However, the question remains - which code of values, can be used to promote the candidacy of a broken state, a hiding place for drug traffickers and other criminal elements in European structures? What kind of Europe is it that wants to integrate unrepentant KLA members, petty thieves, and miscreants? Which ideals exactly should the European Union according to Berlin serve?

Written by: Georgios Harvalias, journalist