Written by: Dr. Gurakuç Kuçi, Professor at Universum College and External Associate at ISLH “OCTOPUS”
Serbia is inciting the citizens of Montenegro and North Macedonia against Kosovo, with the aim of gradually extending this sentiment, as part of its strategic communication against Kosovo, to the institutional and state level. This sentiment is not remaining only on the political margins or within nationalist groups, but is also appearing in municipalities, parliamentary parties, and high-ranking state figures with a clear history of opposition to Kosovo.
This is not merely a propaganda process, but an attempt to produce social hostility, to turn it into a political climate, and then to translate it into institutional positions against Kosovo. In this way, the contestation of Kosovo no longer remains only Serbia’s official position, but is being presented as the will of citizens and institutions in neighboring countries.
Zeta as a Political Precedent
On May 12, on the feast day of Saint Vasil, a saint revered by Serbian and Montenegrin Orthodox Christians, the Municipality of Zeta in Montenegro, led by the Democratic People’s Party, adopted a decision on the “annulment” of Kosovo’s recognition. This decision came after a rally of this party held on May 10, led by Montenegrin MP Milan Knezevic, where lobbying for the withdrawal of Kosovo’s recognition was announced. Knezevic, using clearly nationalist language, added that Montenegro must break out of this “colonialism” and return to the roots of Njegos.
At first glance, this decision may appear absurd. Municipalities do not recognize states, nor can they withdraw recognition of something that does not fall within their competence. But this is precisely where the core of the issue lies, because the objective is not legal effect, but political, psychological, and symbolic effect.
Zeta cannot change Kosovo’s status, but it can create a precedent. It can test the reaction of Podgorica, public opinion, the international factor, and other municipalities where pro-Serbian actors have influence. Therefore, this case should not be read as a municipal decision, but as a test of exporting Serbian contestation of Kosovo into the local institutions of neighboring countries, where an act with no legal effect is used to produce political, emotional, and communicative effect. This is a more advanced phase of hybrid warfare. First, a narrative is produced; then collective emotion is created; and that emotion is inserted into religion, history, sport, festivals, graffiti, and political gatherings. Later, a local actor transforms this atmosphere into an institutional act, even if that act has no legal force.
Montenegro as a Space of Serbian Reconfiguration
The aim is to incite hatred toward Kosovo and pro-Serbian sympathy among the Montenegrin people through religion, nationalism, history, and identity. Therefore, after the 2020 elections and the political changes in Montenegro, the influence of pro-Serbian and pro-Russian parties gradually strengthened. Nor is the instrumentalization of the census a coincidence, where, through political, church-based, and identity campaigns, attempts were made to alter the balance of national self-identification in favor of Serbian identity.
I have addressed this more extensively in my paper “Geopolitical Risks and Reconfigurations: Serbia and the Challenge to Montenegro’s Stability”, where I argued that Serbia aims to use Montenegro as a space for reconfiguring its regional influence. Serbia does not see Montenegro merely as a neighboring state, but as a lost strategic, identity-based, and geopolitical space. For Serbia, the loss of Montenegro also means the loss of access to the sea, the loss of strategic depth, and the loss of part of the Serbian historical narrative on Orthodoxy, Slavism, and the political legacy of the region.
Precisely for this reason, Kosovo is used in Montenegro not only as a matter of foreign policy, but as an instrument for reorienting Montenegro’s own political identity. Knezevic’s reference to Njegos moves beyond historical rhetoric into political rhetoric. Through Njegos, the Serbian Orthodox Church, Saint Vasil, and other religious and historical symbols, the aim is to construct an ideological line in which Montenegro is presented as part of the Serbian world, and not as a civic, independent, and Euro-Atlantic state.
The Circle of Pro-Serbian Municipalities
In this sense, the case of Zeta is directly linked to the attempt to create a circle of pro-Serbian municipalities, structures, and actors within Montenegro. This circle does not need to be immediately declared as a formal project. It can be built gradually through municipalities, parties, the church, the media, the census, historical narratives, and local mobilization.
First, pro-Serbian political islands are created. Then these islands are connected to one another. In the end, they can be used as a basis for larger political demands: greater competencies, autonomy, an association of municipalities, federalization, a referendum, or pressure on the central government.
This logic becomes even more serious when it is seen that the anti-Kosovo sentiment is not limited only to municipalities or to local actors such as Zeta and Knezevic. It has also entered the highest institutional level of Montenegro. The current Speaker of the Parliament of Montenegro, Andrija Mandic, has been among the strongest opponents of Montenegro’s recognition of Kosovo. His previous anti-Kosovo positions have not remained merely at the level of opposition rhetoric, because today he leads the highest representative institution of the Montenegrin state and is part of the country’s security architecture.
This shows that we are dealing with a political, institutional, and communicative chain, not with isolated incidents. Municipalities serve as testing grounds, pro-Serbian parties as mechanisms of mobilization, while central institutions serve as a potential space for turning this climate into state-level pressure. In this chain, Zeta and Knezevic function as local levers of the “Serbian World” agenda, while Mandic shows the entry of this sentiment into the central institutional level. Not Zeta’s decision as a document, but Zeta as a political laboratory.
North Macedonia and the Normalization of Hatred
The same logic has also been seen in North Macedonia. In January 2026, the case of Vevçani showed how Serbian national-chauvinist narratives are penetrating cultural, festive, and local spaces. On January 16, I argued that this case is characteristic of the phase of psychological and social pressure in hybrid warfare, where the objective is not necessarily immediate escalation, but the gradual normalization of the discourse of hatred and conflict.
Open anti-Albanian chants have also been heard at sporting events in North Macedonia, including calls such as “Kill the Albanians”. These messages should not be treated as isolated incidents, because they recur in different forms in Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and other spaces of the Western Balkans.
A piece of graffiti may be an incident. A chant in a stadium may be an incident. A carnival may be presented as satire. A municipal decision may seem absurd. But when all of these are repeated in different countries, with the same anti-Kosovo and anti-Albanian logic, then we are no longer dealing simply with incidents. We are dealing with a pattern of action.
Psychopolitical Encirclement
What these cases show is that Serbia is acting in a multi-vector manner. It uses nationalism, religion, sport, graffiti, festivals, municipalities, and political actors to create an anti-Kosovo mindset in the region. The aim is first to generate social pressure, then to create a political climate, and ultimately to translate that climate into institutional positions against Kosovo.
Therefore, we are dealing with a form of psychopolitical encirclement against Kosovo. Not a classic military encirclement, but an encirclement through hostility produced within the societies surrounding it. The objective is for Kosovo to face not only Serbia’s state-level contestation, but also a fabricated hostile climate in Montenegro and North Macedonia.
This serves Serbia in several ways. It relativizes Belgrade’s aggressive role, because the issue is no longer presented as Serbia against Kosovo, but as “regional dissatisfaction” with Kosovo. It creates pressure on neighboring governments not to strongly support Kosovo. At the same time, it gives Serbia propagandistic and diplomatic material to portray Kosovo as a destabilizing factor, while Serbia presents itself as a state that “manages the concerns” of Serbs and its allies in the region.
Therefore, Zeta and Knezevic are not the beginning of this strategy. They are its activation in an openly political form. Legally, the effect of the action by the Municipality of Zeta is zero. Politically and psychologically, the effect is real. This is the typical evolution of hybrid warfare: from narrative to emotion, from emotion to mobilization, from mobilization to a local act, and from a local act to institutional pressure. If this model is not identified and countered early, it may turn into a regional political chain against Kosovo.