Hundreds of Kosovo Serbs crossed the border on Sunday to vote in parliamentary elections in Serbia after Pristina and Belgrade failed to reach an agreement to allow them to vote in their towns and villages.

Buses of Kosovo Serbs cross the border from Kosovo to SerbiaPhoto: STRINGER / AFP / Profimedia

On Sunday morning, more than 12 buses hired by the Serbian authorities were ready to leave the station in Mitrovica, AFP reported. Crossing the border between Kosovo and Serbia takes two hours, hundreds of cars are blocked, Agerpres reports.

After the declaration of independence of Pristina in 2008, Kosovo Serbs were given the opportunity to vote according to their place of residence. At that time, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was responsible for transporting the ballots to Serbia.

But this year, as in 2022, in the absence of an agreement between Serbia and its former province, which it has never recognized as independent, those who wanted to vote were forced to cross the border.

“We want the best to win,” said Blagoje Stošić, a pensioner who came with a group of friends from Gnilane, about 100 kilometers away. “It was a long wait, many people went to fulfill their duty,” he added.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has always maintained that he will never recognize Kosovo’s independence.

“I am grateful to our people in Kosovo,” he said as he headed to the polling station on Sunday, thanking them “for their love for their country.”

Fifty-year-old Kosovka Paunovic works for a Serbian state company in Kosovo. He also stood in line for several hours to vote: “We came to vote for Serbia, the Serbian state, because it is the only one that supports us, so that it will continue to support us.”

The problem of Kosovo, with a population of 1.8 million people, including 120,000 Serbs, remains an obsession for some Serbs, who consider the territory their national cradle. And some Kosovo Serbs refuse to submit to Pristina.

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