Albin Kurti is the prime minister of Kosovo since 2021. He has supported Ukraine after the complete occupation of the country by Russia. He understands the high price that Ukrainians pay for freedom, because more than 25 years ago Albin Kurti was a student leader fighting for the independence of Kosovo.

In an interview for UNIAN, the Prime Minister of Kosovo spoke about the aid to Ukraine, the prospects of cooperation between the two countries, how Kosovo's experience after the war can help Ukrainians, why Russia is dangerous for its neighbors and why Ukraine's victory is necessary for Europe.

Are you following the war in Ukraine? Is it important for Kosovo?

We follow the events in Ukraine because we are horrified by the illegal, unprovoked, unjustified military aggression and occupation of Ukraine. We follow Ukraine because we want Ukraine to win. And victory for Ukraine means the liberation of all its territory, peace and security for all its citizens, state sovereignty and human rights for all. Ukraine is a democratic country and the struggle of Ukraine is the struggle for democracy with which we identify. First, when the war started in Ukraine, all the memories from the past came flooding back to our minds and souls. So, it was very difficult for the people of Kosovo to watch that criminal terrorist march of aggression against Ukraine that they had experienced in the years 1998-1999.

Secondly, the beginning of the war in Ukraine in February 2022 has affected the social and psychological situation in Kosovo among our people, because the trauma of more than two decades ago has returned to the consciousness of the people.

The third reason that our support is more political and has to do with the possible spillover effect of this war in the Balkans, because we assume that Russia certainly has plans to expand the wars it is waging, including our Balkan region.

On the Independence Day of Ukraine, you said that the war in Ukraine is the European war and the war for Europe. Are European allies doing enough for Ukraine, what do you think?

Ukraine is in Europe, and in the past we thought, from our geography lessons, that Europe lay in the Ural mountain ring. But now we see that Europe ends where the front line is for the liberation of Ukraine. In this sense, the struggle of the Ukrainian people is not only for democracy, but also for Europe, because the Russian Federation wants to expand at the expense of Europe, and Ukrainians fight for the good of Europe.

I believe that the member states of the European Union have generally been very good at accepting refugees. I think there was a kind of high level of hospitality. But this is not enough. It is more of a humanitarian aspect. It is not enough to accept refugees. It is important to help the country and the people to liberate themselves. And we know that there are Ukrainians fighting, but there are also Ukrainians in the occupied territories, and for those Ukrainians in the occupied territories every day is a day of terror and horror. So I think the European Union has achieved a higher degree of unity thanks to the Ukraine war. But I still believe they can do better and more because of Russian aggression in Ukraine and Ukraine's fight for independence and freedom.

NATO has expanded as Sweden and Finland joined the organization. But what is needed now is for the EU to expand and the member states of the EU to do more in terms of helping and supporting the liberation war, in terms of increasing the stability of people and state institutions. And also in terms of better and better armament to drive out the Russian army and Russian forces. I'm not fully aware of who does what, but I know it's a lot, but it could be better and more. And definitely, in my opinion, Ukraine needs more.

Ukraine has not yet recognized the independence of Kosovo. Some experts said that Ukraine did not recognize Kosovo because of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. Are these similar situations?

These are opposite cases, because Crimea was occupied by a foreign power, the Russian Federation, while Kosovo was liberated. Kosovo has 92% Albanians who wanted liberation from Serbia, then all other minorities wanted liberation from Serbia. Everyone wanted liberation. Likewise, a significant number of Serbs, who are 4% of the population, want to live here and not be under Belgrade's directives. So when we were liberated, we had our popular uprising led by the Kosovo Liberation Army and then Serbia started the genocide. In fact, it was not the first genocide.

The genocide that Serbia was committing against our people was also at the end of the 19th century, then during the Balkan wars, the First World War and the Second World War.

In 1999, 19 NATO members decided together to bomb a European country, Serbia. Today we can see that 19 countries cannot approve a press release on certain issues. Can you imagine 19 countries saying together - yes, we should bomb them? It was very bad. Otherwise it would not be possible. And Russia wants to compare itself to NATO, but Russia is an authoritarian criminal state. The 19 NATO members were democratic countries with opposition in every country. So these governments risk losing the elections, but they said that Serbia should be bombed. The situation was such that the liberation of Kosovo with the uprising of the people and the Kosovo Liberation Army. And NATO's intervention cannot be compared to the invasion of Crimea.

A journalist once challenged me a few years ago and told me that our movement is called Vetëvendosje, which is the name of the party I lead. He asked what about self-determination in Crimea, because there was also a referendum. And I said that self-determination is democratic, it comes from the people, not from above. In the Crimean referendum, I saw Russian soldiers in those regions holding ballot boxes. You can't have soldiers from another country holding ballot boxes and pretending it's a democratic referendum or a self-determination exercise, and there were no follow-up questions.

Have you had contact with the Ukrainian authorities? Do you see any progress in contacting the leaders of Ukraine and Kosovo?

I had the opportunity to have dinner with President Zelensky and other Balkan leaders in Athens. I did not have a special meeting with him. Before that, I had a telephone conversation with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba. I also met him during the World Economic Forum in Davos, again with other Balkan leaders. We didn't have a special meeting.

I think there have been some false analogies, false parallels between the situation in Donbass, Crimea and Kosovo. As far as I am concerned, if there is a parallel, it is between some pro-Russian forces and illegal structures of Russia in Crimea and Donbass and with some parallel structures of Serbia that we have in Kosovo, especially in the north. If you want to draw a parallel, it has to be this other kind of parallel.

Maybe the recognition of Kosovo will happen in the future, but your country is helping us now. Why? What kind of help is this?

We are part of the Demining Coalition within the Defense Contact Group of Ukraine. The coalition is led by Lithuania and includes 22 countries. More than 100 Ukrainians have been trained in mine clearance. The training was carried out by the organization MAT Kosova in cooperation with the Kosovo Security Force. I am sure that the deminers of Kosovo have very good experience in demining the post-war areas. Our army, the Kosovo Security Force, has provided training at the Search and Rescue Training Center, as well as chemical, nuclear and biological defense training.

Our Ministry of Defense together with the Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom, within the framework of the Interflex cooperation, are training the recruits of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in combat tactics. So far, 34 thousand recruits have been trained in this operation. And we have delivered two packages of military aid to the armed forces of Ukraine.

The first pack contains tactical military trucks and other vehicles. The second package contains 10.000 mortar shells of various calibers.

We have approved all 13 EU sanctions packages against Russia, Belarus and their proxies. We have also supported all US sanctions from the beginning, we have banned the entry of people with Russian passports or residence cards. However, there are some exceptions, such as diplomats. The Assembly of Kosovo has approved the resolution for the possible reception of 5000 refugees from Ukraine. We have unilaterally and temporarily lifted the visa regime for citizens of Ukraine.

We also established and approved the program to host and support 20 Ukrainian journalists. Now there are 14 journalists living and working in Kosovo for Ukrainian media.

So this is in our capacity that we have done for about two reasons. One is humanitarian aid. First, we feel our duty, when someone is in need we must show solidarity because that is what makes us human. And secondly, because we believe that the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian state are on the right side of history, in which we also believe.

Kosovo is now 25 years after the war. What kind of experience of your country would be useful for Ukraine after the war?

After the war here in Kosovo, the United Nations has helped us a lot here in terms of humanitarian beliefs, refugee return and peacekeeping. But at that time, after the war, we were liberated, but we did not get independence, so we were under the UN system. Although the UN was good in the humanitarian part, not in democracy and development. However, if I have a suggestion, after the destruction of the war, there is always a push for the so-called privatization, if you know this approach, you are ruined.

You have nothing, you had to sell everything and then privatization, and that was a big mistake here. So for liberal markets, you don't need privatization. Publicly owned companies and private companies can compete in a free market. So beware of large corporations that want to buy development capacity, production facilities or land as such, or very cheap resources because you're broke. Privatization pushes big corporations into devastated post-war situations where people are very hungry and hungry for investment and can be abused.

And the second thing is that for all the donors and grants you get, you have to be in charge as a coordinator. You have to have your own program with strategies, projects, activities and then tell the donors what you need, so the demand should precede the supply and not the other way around.

Here are two suggestions, no big privatization, and whenever there is aid and donors, check and ask what you need, because you may end up getting what you don't need.

What about the punishment of war crimes? Is it possible?

It should be possible. But I don't think it will be easy without democratic changes in the Russian Federation. Because even if the Russian military leaves Ukraine, returns to Russia, I don't see how all the war criminals you have identified will be dealt with in a fair trial. And you know, the despotic president Putin is accused, but who will arrest him? I think the impunity will be very disappointing. It is important to have good crime records. This is very important. But then bringing people to justice will take a long time and it won't be easy unless there are democratic changes in the Russian Federation, which, to be honest, I don't see ever happening .

I think Moscow and other Russian archives have all the evidence of the genocide in Ukraine. Because the killings that the Russian army and paramilitaries are doing in Ukraine are not the result of a few reckless soldiers and officers drinking too much vodka. There are Kremlin plans for this, and these plans are in the archives, and these archives must be opened one day.

How is it possible to live next door to a neighbor who wants to kill your people? Do you have some recommendations for Ukrainians after the war?

The neighbor who is not good must stay in his house. We cannot change history. We cannot change the geography, but we can have a better future. And this is with determination and clarity, Ukraine will need a strong army even after liberation, and it will not rest until Russia becomes a democracy. So that means, in Russia's case, perhaps becoming a republic or a federation of republics instead of an 18th century empire.

You can't sleep well if your neighbor wants to be an emperor. And this is the problem we have with Serbia. Serbia is called a republic, but if you look closely, it behaves and acts like a monarchy, where the president has a lot of power not to respect human rights, pluralism and all these laws.

Serbia did not join the anti-Russian sanctions and is one of the countries that continues to cooperate with Russia. You said it's a little Russia in the Balkans, right?

Yes, I think that Serbia is a small Russia in the Balkans. Serbia and Russia are currently engaged in cooperation and military activities. It is interesting that Serbia has signed a free trade agreement with Russia.

Apart from Gazprom, Serbia has accepted Lukoil, Russian Railways, BTB Bank, Rosatom, Roscosmos and Sberbank. From February to June 2022, 360 new companies and 960 entrepreneurs from the Russian Federation were registered in Serbia.

Yandex LLC, a Russian technology company, has confirmed that it will open a new office in Serbia with 2000 employees. Andrei Kirnov, the head of the Russian trade mission in Serbia, announced that the office will become the main branch of the company for Europe. Russia is Serbia's fourth largest trading partner after Germany, China and Italy.

Belgrade has refused to join Western sanctions against Russia over the conflict in eastern Ukraine. So, before the Russian aggression, Serbia was completely with Russia. And then, in one or two cases, they voted in favor of Ukraine, but they prepared the international ground for aggression and now, to get some Western money, sometimes they either abstain or say that we support the territorial integrity of Ukraine because Kosovo is ours.

How is it possible to fight against information aggression? We have the same problems with Russia. I am sure that Russia and Serbia have waged a hybrid war.

In Kosovo, we have no source of destabilization that we cannot face and emerge victorious. But some of the things that come from outside are much more powerful and complex. So, with our Western partners, we are doing our best to combat the disinformation and disinformation campaigns that are at the heart of hybrid warfare. We are also strengthening our cyber security. There have been many hacking attempts, such as DDoS attacks, which create a high frequency of bombing and have been done in some cases, our government website was down, for example, for several hours at a time, and were attacked time and time again sometimes the pages of different ministries.

It expanded its presence in Serbia through cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior, especially the installation of BS security intelligence at the Center for Cooperation in Civil Defense at Niche Airport, cooperation between members of the Secret Service of Serbia.

How is the security of Kosovo guaranteed by the international community? Ukraine had some security guarantees, I mean the Budapest memorandum, but it didn't work.

Well, I have great faith in NATO. I believe that our generation cannot create a better security umbrella for our democracy and progress than NATO. So I really want to see NATO strengthened around the world, but especially in Europe, and these additional things that we need should be within that framework.

And do you think this is the future of Ukraine? And of course, the European Union or not?

Yes, both. I think if you want social welfare, it's the EU. If you want security and peace, it's NATO. We must be members of both organizations. I am talking about Ukraine and Kosovo.

And for the future of Russia? Will it be a democratic country?

The current situation is that the Russian Federation is not looking to the future, it is looking to the past. They want to come back. They don't want to go forward. So this country is being led by a person who, on the one hand, has nostalgia for the golden age of the Russian Empire and, on the other hand, is extremely bitter towards the West and the fact that, as the world progresses, Russia is far from the number two dog in the 20th century.

In the second half of the 20th century they enjoyed this atmosphere of being behind us, but now they seem to be falling down the old world rankings in terms of power and strength.

So I think this combination of nostalgia and bitterness is pretty hopeless, but I always believe in people. I don't think that there are people who are bad as a collective, as a mass, but in every people and every country fascism can fall like a plague. Our grandparents fought against German and Italian fascism, but now our generation is fighting against Russian fascism. So there is no absolute immunity from fascism. You should always be careful and alert. And now, unfortunately, the people of Russia, with a small Internet, have gone from one extreme to another, from communism to fascism./Unian