Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić urged Serbs in Kosovo to remain calm and not react to provocations on the day of early municipal elections in four municipalities in northern Kosovo.

Elections will be held next Sunday, April 23, in the municipalities of North Mitrovica, Leposavić, Zvecan and Zubin Potok with Serbian majorities. These are the municipalities where in November 2022 Serbs left en masse from all local governments.

Representatives of the Kosovo Serbs, at the insistence of Belgrade, decided to boycott the early municipal elections next Sunday. Participation was declared by only one combination representing the Serbs.

Aleksandar Vučić, in an interview last night on a private TV channel, said that the Serbian abstention is a reaction to Pristina’s refusal to implement the Brussels agreement reached in 2013 to establish the Union of Serbian municipalities.

The President of Serbia stressed that the result of these elections would not be legally binding as the majority of Serbs would not participate. “Sunday will be a terrible day for democracy and a difficult day for the Serbian population of Kosovo. This will be a day that will be marked as the shame of Europe and the whole world for what they are doing,” Vučić said. He accused the international actor of hypocrisy, saying that he was tolerating Pristina’s violation of democratic values, and if Belgrade, as he said, had organized elections that an ethnic minority abstained from, it would have provoked a strong reaction.

In the northern part of Kosovo, preparations for the smooth running of elections have been completed. Problems caused by Serbs’ refusal to provide premises for the electoral process were overcome by placing containers in various places in northern Kosovo where voters can go to vote.

Source: RES-IPE