Whoever mined the Ibar-Lepenac canal was very successful because the atmosphere in Kosovo is poisoned, Milica Andrić Rakić from the New Social Initiative, a non-governmental organization from North Mitrovica, told "Vreme"
Dan who is the prime minister of Kosovo Albin Kurti and the Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić he spent Tuesday in Brussels did not change anything.
Kurti also accused Serbia of a "terrorist attack" on the Ibar-Lepenac canal, whose blasting on Friday occasionally led to water shortages and endangerment of the "Obilić" thermal power plant.
Vučić, on the other hand, denied any involvement, suggesting that Belgrade is conducting its own investigation and has certain knowledge.
In Serbian areas in Kosovo, people are detained and then released - only the brothers Dragiša and Jovan Vićentijević, suspected of blowing up the canal near Zubina Potok, are in custody for up to thirty days.
Kurti's election campaign
Milica Andrić Rakić from New Social Initiative, a non-governmental organization from North Mitrovica, says that the attack on the canal is a political victory for Kurti, who can now do what he is used to - to blame everything on the Serbs.
Parliamentary elections will be held in Kosovo on February 9. The economic cataclysm reduced support for Kurti's Self-Determination, which won a spectacular victory four years ago with just over fifty percent of the vote.
Now, according to some sources, Kurti has fallen to 35 percent and is campaigning by sending police with long pipes to the North.
But Andrić Rakić is not sure that Kurti will be able to save political profits until the election. "If they don't know how to rehabilitate this, they could have supply problems, restrictions, burst pipes." There are problems every winter anyway, electricity is imported."
"If the elections were tomorrow, there would certainly be political benefits for Kurti." But the elections are only after two months of icy winter and I'm not sure about Kurti's rating in February," she continues in an interview for the new issue of "Vremena", which will hit newsstands on Thursday (December 5).
Sabotage on fertile ground
Hence the fear that this is not the last incident until the election. "I'm worried," says Andrić Rakić, "because whoever did this - Belgrade, Pristina or some of their factions, pro-Russian or more radical in Self-Determination, or some third party - had a lot of success and they won't stop there."
"Everything falls on fertile ground." The point is that for three years no one deals with the atmosphere that makes Kosovo vulnerable to such attacks," she concludes.
**Read the entire article about the events in Kosovo in the new issue of "Vremena" from Thursday. Or do **subscribe to the print or digital edition.
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