Journalist Darya Aslamova was barred from getting into Kosovo on Saturday
Russian journalist and veteran battle reporter Darya Aslamova was briefly detained and banned from getting into Kosovo on Saturday amid the latest flare-up of tensions between Serbia and the breakaway area.
Kosovo Inside Minister Xhelal Svecla wrote on Fb that Aslamova, who writes for newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, was detained at a border checkpoint within the northern a part of the area.
“Many nations have confirmed that she had engaged in espionage for the Russian army intelligence and acted underneath the guise of a journalist,” Svecla wrote, accusing Aslamova of “propagandizing in regards to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” The minister added that Aslamova was banned from getting into Kosovo and the authorities had been holding the journalist till her “intentions are decided.”
Svecla posted a number of images of Aslamova, together with some with Russian International Minister Sergey Lavrov and Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Komsomolskaya Pravda mentioned on Sunday morning that Aslamova had been launched and arrived in Raska, a Serbian metropolis on the border with Kosovo. “I arrived on the border by 4am. Serbian border guards have interrogated me as nicely. They had been inquiring why I don’t have a deportation stamp,” the journalist mentioned.
In keeping with the paper, Aslamova was on an task to report in regards to the latest tensions between Kosovo and Serbia when she was detained, whereas stating that the espionage accusations had been “baseless.”
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Aslamova has coated armed conflicts in Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Chechnya, and Nagorno-Karabakh, amongst different locations.
A NATO-led peacekeeping power was dispatched in Kosovo in 1999 following an Albanian insurgency within the area and the bloc’s 78-day bombing marketing campaign in what was then Yugoslavia.
The province declared independence in 2008. Whereas the US and most European nations have acknowledged it, Serbia, Russia, China, and the UN on the whole haven’t.
Tensions within the area flared-up after the Kosovo authorities unveiled a plan to require Serbs residing within the north to make use of Kosovo automobile license plates as an alternative of Serbian plates.
President Aleksandar Vucic referred to as the plan an assault on Kosovo’s Serbian inhabitants and accused Pristina of violating the rights of native Serbs. Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti accused the Serbs of attacking the police and claimed Kosovo is dealing with “Serbian national-chauvinism.”
The following protests prompted the Kosovo authorities final week, after consultations with the US and EU, to postpone the implementation of the license plate rule till September. In trade, Pristina demanded that Serbs dismantle the roadblocks they arrange throughout the protests.
Reuters reported on Monday that peacekeepers stationed within the area oversaw the elimination of roadblocks.
