Russia's ambassador sees Serbia's president more often than any diplomat in Belgrade. We have one question for him.
The Editorial Board | 8 August 2026
On 17 July at noon, Aleksandr Botsan-Kharchenko was received at Vila Mir; on 9 July, at Andrićev venac. The Serbian press has noted what the schedule shows: Russia's ambassador sees Serbia's president more often than any other envoy in the capital. He has held the post since 2019, and in 2007 he sat as Moscow's representative in the troika that negotiated Kosovo's status. No serving diplomat has carried Russia's Kosovo file longer, which is why our question goes to him.
On the eve of the Vila Mir meeting he said that Russia strongly supports the preservation of Serbia's territorial integrity and sovereignty where Kosovo is concerned. We take him at his word. Then came the first week of August.
His embassy wrote on Tuesday that Oluja stands as the precedent for "the Russian population of Donbas and Novorusija," and that the complete elimination of the threat to them is "the most important condition" for resolving the Ukrainian crisis. His government has declared those regions annexed. Serbia, the brotherly nation, votes in the General Assembly that Donbas and Crimea are Ukraine. His government holds that Kosovo is Serbia, and he said so himself in July, in the language of territorial integrity. Ukraine, the state whose threat his embassy wants eliminated, stood in Belgrade on Saturday and took his government's exact position on Kosovo. The same Saturday, in Belegiš, his host explained that Serbia has friendly relations with Ukraine because of that position, jer Ukrajina ne priznaje Kosovo kao nezavisnu državu, while remaining the only country in Europe that has not sanctioned Russia. One week: his embassy names Ukraine the threat, his host names Ukraine the friend, and both give the same borders as the reason. All of these cannot be true at the same time.
So, on the record: which one is true? If Ukraine is the threat his embassy described on Tuesday, what was his host thanking it for on Saturday? If Donbas is Novorusija, why does the brotherly nation vote it Ukrainian in New York? And the precedent runs further than his embassy may have intended, because the statement names 1999 the culmination, which puts Kosovo on the line drawn from Krajina to Donbas. Ukraine's president stood at the end of that line on Saturday and read Moscow's position back to the room. His host came within a clause of the one answer that reconciles everything: that territorial integrity, in this file, is a vocabulary shared by governments that agree on nothing else. We would settle for hearing that from a professional.
Our question fits in one sentence. His meetings run to hours. We will print the answer in full.
