By Çim Peka

While the Albanian public opinion has been bombarded with the news of the internal developments in the Democratic Party for at least three months, far from our eyes, but not far from us, in Belgrade and Banja Luka the chauvinist concept of the 'Serbian World' has taken an official form.  A project conceived by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić himself, under the new model of Putin's concept of the 'Russian World'.  What Vučić refers to as the 'Open Balkans' in Tirana, Skopje and Brussels, in Belgrade he sometimes refers to it as the 'Serbian World', and sometimes as the 'Serbian Space'.  But unlike the empty rhetoric among Albanians, the Serbs have advanced more, starting to put into practice their concept, new in form but not in content.

After his temporary failure to change the borders and the partition of Kosovo, thanks to the opposition of Albin Kurti in Kosovo and Sali Berisha in Albania, Vučić began to stage an alternative plan of control over the smaller states in the region.  In parallel with the so-called 'Open Balkans', its tools in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska and its Serbian leader Milorad Dodik, began concrete actions to secede the Serb entity in Bosnia and create a 'de facto' independent Serbian state.  Last week, the Republika Srpska Parliament decided to remove its and that of the Serbs from all federal institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including the army and other security institutions.  With Bosnian Serbs in the process of secession and eventual war there;  with a pro-Serbian and pro-Belgrade government in Montenegro, with the Open Balkans with Albania and North Macedonia, with the Serbian Church being an extended arm of the Russian secret services in each of these Balkan states, and under the model, and as an extension of Vladimir Putin's 'Russian World', Aleksandar Vučić comes to Tirana today as a guest of Edi Rama, and as an enemy of the Albanians.  But that is only half of the story.

He also comes to Tirana as an influence agent of the Russian World, of a world that has taken aggressive and military form from the Baltic, to Belarus, Ukraine and the Balkans.  A world that aims to undermine Europe's security architecture and undermine from within the North Atlantic Alliance.

At a time when Putin has surrounded Ukraine with 170,000 troops, the Russian Foreign Ministry presented to the US government its offer in the form of an ultimatum that already affects not only Ukraine, but the entire former Socialist Bloc.  As a Russian condition for maintaining neutrality in the confrontation between the US and China, Russia seeks 'de facto' and 'de jure' the restoration of its influence not only in the former Soviet republics, but in all the countries of the former Eastern Bloc,  including Albania.  The points of Russian demands consist of vetoing every NATO decision.  They demand the non-deployment of NATO troops or weapons in any of the countries of the former Warsaw Pact.  Demanding the ban on new memberships (including Kosovo);  as well as demanding that the security architecture in Europe be dictated by Moscow.  The creation of the 'Russian World' is required to be placed on the same border with the Soviet world.  What Vladimir Putin has mentioned several times since 2007, a new deal, a Second Yalta, which since last week Washington has it as an official offer on the table.

The Russian courage to recreate the Russian world, and the Serbian one for the Serbian world are not accidental in these moments, they are not accidental.  They come at a time when the US is facing the prospect of a quick war in Taiwan.  The creation of a potential war front in Taiwan by China, and another war front in Ukraine by Russia, seems to be in full coordination between Moscow and Beijing to test the US where they will give up first, Taiwan or in Europe.

Aleksandar Vučić comes to Tirana as a representative not only of the ‘Serbian World’, but also as a representative of the ‘Russian World’, and the Russian-Chinese Alliance.  Therefore, the opposition protest today in Tirana is not a simple protest against the Open Balkans, but a protest against the 'Russian World' and a second Yalta.  It is a protest against the efforts of Edi Rama to put Albania once again under the influence and the Russian Bloc.  It is a protest that seeks to keep Albanians under the West and under the American sphere of influence.  It is a pro-NATO and pro-US protest.  The protest today takes place under the black clouds of Yalta II.  If in 1945, Enver Hoxha's Albania chose to stay in the East, today Albanians have the opportunity to raise their voice, to protest and to be heard, to stay where they belong: in the West, and in alliance with the United States.

Albanians today can choose to go out to protest or stay home, but their future has never been in question as it is now.