Serbian 155-mm self-propelled guns NORA B-52 sent towards the administrative border of Kosovo

YouTube ^ | December 27, 202 | Itapirkanmaa2

[House Atreides]

This is just a 16 second video clip to give you an indication of how serious things may be getting between Kosovo and Serbia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPwa-dXog5Y

[BobL]

“We have acted very foolishly and squandered the two decades we reigned as the sole Great Power on, well, foolishness.”

More like 3 decades, plus - and all we did during that time was make China stronger and stronger. Great way to stay as King-of-the-Hill. I’ll draw my conclusions on just how weak Russia is when the Ukraine War winds down.

[House Atreides]

Thanks for the info. ;-)

[MalPearce]

Any country that wants to leave NATO can leave NATO. I wish people would stop this fantasy that NATO is a club that they get press-ganged into being members of, and have no exit route.

It’s a completely voluntary club. Unlike the Russian equivalent though, it’s a club countries other than the superpower at the top actually don’t mind being members of.

Russia’s lost several of the members of CSTO and the existing club members aren’t that willing to be dragged fully into Putin’s absurd reconquest mission.

[dforest]

We know and they know who is stirring up trouble there and who is making the threats.

Neocons always bullying and threatening to gain more power.

[Czech_Occidentalist]

Do you know why the EU is able to sanction Hungary? Because Hungary isn’t supported by Poland anymore. Why? Because Hungary is playing Putin’s tune, which is anathema to Poland. Orban bet on the wrong horse.

Belgrade won’t be bombed into ashes, by NATO or anyone else. Unlike Russia the West isn’t into bombing cities into ashes and - actually - I doubt there will any bombing of Belgrade at all.

NATO hardware isn’t depleted. The only item the NATO countries may be lacking is artillery ammunition. It’s because the NATO doctrine is based on air attacks, not on heavy artillery fire.

[xkaydet65]

These days the shots are called in Davos.

[BobL]

“Unlike Russia the West isn’t into bombing cities into ashes and - actually - I doubt there will any bombing of Belgrade at all.”

Have you ever even talked to someone from Belgrade? I have. It REALLY did happen, and they’re still trying to figure out why. There’s even a Wikipedia page on it.

[Czech_Occidentalist]

Some targets in Belgrade were bombed, no one denies that. However, it wasn’t indiscriminate shelling or razing a city to the ground, which is a typical Russian way of waging war. See Mariupol:
https://d39-a.sdn.cz/d_39/c_img_gS_m/GYPQ.jpeg?fl=res,1280,720,1,%7Cjpg,60,,1

Did Belgrade look like this? No. I objected to your phrase “bombed into ashes.”

[BobL]

Did Neocon Ground Troops take Belgrade against substantial resistance?

[Czech_Occidentalist]

Are you saying there were armed Ukrainian troops in every appartment block in that picture that was destroyed / heavily damaged? I doubt it. The Russians simply shoot unguided munitions at residential areas.

[CatHerd]

I agree it’s highly unlikely we will bomb Belgrade again. We bombed it pretty good last time around in 1999. I beg to differ on the West’s aversion to bombing cities to ashes, though. Ask the Japanese — we fire bombed their cities to ashes, then nuked a couple. Ask the folks in Dresden. When we consider a war to be existential, we can get all fire-breathing Godzilla on our enemies.

The reason NATO doctrine is based on air attacks is the US military is primarily aerospace and maritime. We don’t do big land army stuff as well (although we can easily field a good land army here in our own hemisphere). We sit between our two oceans, far from potential battlefields in Europe and Asia. It takes a whole lotta ships and planes to move a big land army and all its stuff across big old oceans, and also time. And the US is the King Daddy of NATO.

Ref Hungary. It’s the odd duck of Europe. They are neither Slavic nor Germanic yet are surrounded by Slavs, and for long centuries were bound up with the Austrians and various Slavic vassal states. Their relations with Austria didn’t end so well. Like the Slavs, they got a taste of the Muslim yoke and vowed never again, but they are not Slavs and don’t quite fit in with them, either. They really are odd ducks.

I would not so much interpret their balking at accepting woke Western ways and a flood of Muslim immigrants as “playing Putin’s tune” as simply their odd duckiness. They are an ancient, proud, stubborn and rather fierce people, and were rather a burr under the Soviet saddle (and the Hapsburg saddle, too, before that). The Hungarians tend to go their own way and don’t like being under the thumb of either German or Slav. While they are quite civilized, they somehow did not tame as well as their brother Finns.

Czechs are somewhat odd, too, and very likeable. Like many of their brother Slavs, they fell on the Catholic side of the Catholic/Orthodox fault line, but unlike the vast majority of Slavic peoples, never got seriously whooped up on by the Mongols or Turks or Tatars. While their history of relations with the Germans and Austrians (and Russians!) was hardly always pleasant(!), they managed to navigate rather well and flower in the end. Beautiful art and architecture, too.

[BobL]

“Are you saying there were armed Ukrainian troops in every appartment block in that picture that was destroyed”

If there weren’t, Russia would have quickly rolled up the city.

[Justa]

Did Serbia rebuild their appliance factories?

Ownership of Kosovo Trepca mines needs changing?

Quick, find some cancer patients, put them behind barbed wire and call the press corps.

[CatHerd]

Belgrade 1999:

Is the one below for real? Maybe so, as there is a similar one that is smaller and grainier from WaPo:

Pristina 1999:

Baghdad 1991:

Firebombing of Tokyo, WWII:

Bombing of Dresden, WWII:

What we bombed in Serbia: various government buildings, various military targets, infrastructure (including power grid, bridges, rail stations, TV/radio stations, etc), oil refineries, car factories, shoe factories, agribusiness structures, etc. Some oopsies: hospital, retirement home, sanitorium, apartment buildings, passenger train, civilian busses, ethnic Albanian refugee convoys and camps, Chinese embassy, etc.

[CatHerd]

You are most welcome :)

Update:

The Germans are playing bad cop to US/EU/KFOR’s good cop act:

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-urges-kosovo-serb-militants-to-remove-barricades/a-64226998

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/kosovo-serb-arrest-caused-crisis-released-jail-95888521

Maybe it will settle down now. Well, except for the darn license plates. It seems there must always be a license plate squabble in the Balkans.

[Pelham]

“This started out as just another license plate dust up.”

You need to elaborate on that. It sounds like the War of Jenkins Ear or something.

[CatHerd]

Lol! You’re right. It does sound like that.

See first link in my post here for The License Plate Story:

https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4118924/posts?page=13#13

If you have any interest in the history of Kosovo, there are more posts on that thread at the second link where I go into that.

[CatHerd]

Final update:

---

Serbs in northern Kosovo to start removing barricades from Thursday:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kosovo-put-detained-serb-under-house-arrest-possibly-easing-standoff-2022-12-28/

---

Looks like it’s all over now. The policeman sent home on house arrest, Serbs removing barricades.

Ref Kurti carrying on about “a charge relating to terrorism” — well, everything in the Balkans tends to get overblown, and whenever or wherever “the international community” is involved, it gets even crazier because they play to that audience. The best I can tell, the ethnic Serb policeman in question (the one who was arrested and jailed) smacked another policeman (presumably ethnic Albanian) who was beating a protester (presumably ethnic Serb).

It appears Kurti is basically calling the protester a “terrorist” — which is pretty rich, considering Kurti was (and is) a bigwig in the narco-mafia terrorist gun-running white-slave-trading KLA, which our State Department designated as a terrorist organization and Interpol had labelled “the Scourge of Europe” not very long before NATO became their air force in 1999. (And Holbrooke called them “Che Guavera wannabes”, which was pretty funny at the time.) The German BND had caught them training with Al-Qaida on at least two occasions prior to the 1999 NATO bombing campaign as well. Go figure.

The KLA still retain links to terrorist and terrorist-supporting organizations to this day. Example:

https://nordicmonitor.com/2021/10/kosovo-liberation-army-had-links-to-turkish-jihadist-outfit-ihh-which-is-still-active-in-kosovo-today/