The Ministry of Defence has announced the arrival of the first soldiers, part of a 200-member deployment, in Pristina, reinforcing NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR) peacekeeping mission.
This move is in response to the violent attack on Kosovo Police on 24 September, intensifying regional tensions.
These soldiers hail from the 1st Battalion of the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment. They will be teaming up with the existing 400-strong British contingent, who remained in Kosovo after an annual exercise to bolster stability.
Notably, the augmentation will not be limited to soldiers alone. The press release stated, “The peacekeeping force will include not only troops, but also hundreds of vehicles arriving by sea freight.”
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was quoted as saying, “The UK is a leading NATO Ally. Within a few days, the UK has responded to NATO’s call for reinforcements and deployed 200 additional soldiers from the First Battalion Princess of Wales’ Royal Regiment for the Kosovo Force (KFOR). This shows the agility of the UK’s Armed Forces.”
KFOR, under the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, has been operational in Kosovo since 1999 with more than 4,500 troops from 27 NATO Allies and partners. The UK’s commitment to this initiative is substantial. Beyond the troop deployment, the UK also provides two intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance units, and UK staff officers work at the mission headquarters.
Absolutely essential as Mad Vlad would love this to light off too.
The number of areas of tension that Russia, Iran and china can exploit is quite high..these areas of ethic hatred are so easy to exploit…Bosnia and Kosovo are two areas that Russian can cause trouble in..either one could explode a conflict right in the middle of NATO… worryingly we are starting to see fires starting..fuelled by ethic hatred and rampant nationalism…it’s worth remembering that WW2 was not a single conflict but was a actually a number of regional fires that sweep across the globe. ukraine already happening Bosnia ( splitting and a war between Serbia, Croatia )…this involves a NATO… Read more »
Someone on here was spouting the other day how no-one would join Russia….sheer niaviety.
I don’t think it’s much more unstable than the world has been in the last 100 years.
It’s just in todays modern electronic society everybody knows everything at the touch of button. In the past not many people would know about what was going on unless it was big enough to make the papers.
The west was so news focused on Afghanistan etc conflicts were not reported until they caused substantial damage.
Interestingly it probably is, we have had a steady decrease in conflict From 1950 onward ( Pax Americana) which we seem to be now moving out off.
“the number of international wars decreased from a rate of six per year in the 1950s to one per year in the 2000s, and the number of fatalities decreased from 240 reported deaths per million to less than 10 reported deaths per million”
Ahh. I don’t know there were statistics on the matter. Worth a read me thinks.
Interesting. This is for peer-peer international wars. But I suspect that other kinetic conflicts have increased. Such as fighting international terrorist groups, irregular forces etc.
Geez can they not just get along with each other.
So much of the tension comes from ignorance and hatred of people they don’t know. Fear of the unknown.
People responsible for stoking situations to suit their own agenda are a big problem.
99% of people are nice and don’t want drama, war etc. it’s the 1% that stir up and pull people into their sphere of influence
The sad true is it takes many people to make a peace and a very small number to make a war.
Statement of the week brought to us by Jonathan.
Very true unfortunately.