{"id":27488,"date":"2026-08-12T13:30:56","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T13:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/27488\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T13:30:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T13:30:56","slug":"zelenskyys-balkan-fumble-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/27488\/","title":{"rendered":"Zelenskyy\u2019s Balkan fumble \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Serbia still produces considerable quantities of ammunition in the Soviet-standard calibers which would be impossible to acquire from Kyiv\u2019s Western allies, who use the NATO standard instead. Ukraine retains Soviet-era heavy howitzers and tanks that remain key to the fight in the Donbas and beyond. And despite his pro-Russian stance, Vu\u010di\u0107 is <a href=\"https:\/\/europeanwesternbalkans.com\/2026\/08\/07\/zelenskyys-visit-preceeded-by-longstanding-deliveries-of-serbian-weapons-to-ukraine\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">happy to provide them<\/a> to Kyiv quietly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUkraine is in a position where it cannot care about things beyond the more immediate needs for Ukraine, and Vu\u010di\u0107 matters to him more,\u201d explained Florian Bieber, who directs the Centre for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz.<\/p>\n<p>Vu\u010di\u0107\u2019s overtures toward Zelenskyy could be in part an effort to placate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/eu-serbia-aleksandar-vucic-europe-letter-mep-antonio-costa\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">criticism from Brussels<\/a>. EU leaders have condemned the \u201cexplosion of violence\u201d during the ongoing anti-government protest movement and the \u201ccollapse in democratic standards\u201d in Serbia.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s hoping that he will get less critical remarks in the coming months because of his close, at least symbolically closer, ties with Zelenskyy. Vu\u010di\u0107 is doing this for leverage with the EU ahead of possible elections in the country,\u201d Bieber continued.<\/p>\n<p>Kosovo\u2019s supporters have long cast its independence as a one-off, not a template. But the circumstances of its journey away from Serbia remains divisive, particularly for EU members like Spain and Cyprus, who have their own separatist headaches and still refuse to recognize Kosovo\u2019s independence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDepending on which side of this argument you\u2019re coming down on, you will have a different view over what Kosovo\u2019s independence means for other conflicts and other territorial disputes around the world,\u201d said Bieber.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Serbia still produces considerable quantities of ammunition in the Soviet-standard calibers which would be impossible to acquire from&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6983,5646,4392,704,899,9881,4913,9485,64,652,25,780,376,2558,1880,630,26,33,152,314,3938,9882],"class_list":["post-27488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-aleksandar-vucic","tag-ammunition","tag-balkans","tag-conflict","tag-cyprus","tag-edi-rama","tag-georgia","tag-kosovo","tag-kremlin","tag-rights","tag-russia","tag-sanctions","tag-security","tag-serbia","tag-spain","tag-tanks","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-war","tag-water","tag-yugoslavia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}