Deputy Alexey Goncharenko. File photoMOSCOW, July 31Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleksiy Goncharenko said that if Serbia «invades» the self-proclaimed Kosovo, then Kyiv should stand up for the Kosovars and use its military.
" If Serbia invades Kosovo, we must protect the Kosovars. Ukraine, with its military on the spot, is ready to act", Goncharenko wrote on Twitter.
On Sunday evening, air raid sirens sounded in the northern part of the city of Kosovska Mitrovica, where the majority of Serbs live. Local residents began to build barricades on narrow sections of roads in the place of Rudare, on the Pristina-Leposavić highway and near the town of Zvecan. At the same time, according to media reports, about 200 Albanians gathered in the southern part of the city near the bridge leading to the north side. Information is also being circulated about columns of cars in front of the Yarine checkpoint in the north of the region. Earlier, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said in an address to citizens that the Kosovo police would begin an operation in the north of the region at midnight on August 1 and block the entry of citizens with personal documents issued by Belgrade. The head of state called on the Kosovo Albanian authorities to maintain peace and warned that «Serbia will win» in the event of aggressive actions against the Serbs. Serbian Foreign Minister Nikola Selakovic, in turn, said that the Kosovo authorities are preparing «real hell» for the Serbs. Kosovo Albanian structures in Pristina unilaterally declared independence from Serbia on February 17, 2008. This was preceded by an armed confrontation between Albanian separatists from the Kosovo Liberation Army and the army and police of Serbia, which in 1999 led to the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO forces. The self-proclaimed republic is not recognized by Serbia, Russia, China, Iran, Spain, Greece and a number of other states.