Pristina in Panic: Kurti Accused of Losing America

The opening of a strategic dialogue and partnership between Serbia and the United States, agreed on July 17 at the meeting of Marko Djuric and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, landed in Pristina as a defeat. Serbia’s entry into the Artemis program deepened the impression that Washington is turning toward Belgrade, while its strategic dialogue with the provisional institutions in Pristina remains suspended.

The Albanian opposition and several former diplomats blame Prime Minister Albin Kurti for the reversal. In their reading, the unilateral moves of his government and its treatment of the Serb community in Kosovo pushed Pristina into isolation at the very moment Belgrade is deepening ties with what it calls its most important ally.

Why is Washington turning toward Belgrade?

The substance of the Djuric-Rubio meeting and the language of strategic partnership handed Belgrade a diplomatic card it has not held in years. In Pristina, by contrast, the suspension of the strategic dialogue was read as a direct consequence of the confrontational policy pursued by Kurti’s cabinet.

Vlora Citaku, an official of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, assessed that Pristina is growing more isolated while Serbia builds a strategic partnership with Washington. Her party, along with other opposition voices, sees this as confirmation that the government’s unilateral course cost Kosovo dearly at its most important international address.

Former foreign ministers Petrit Selimi and Enver Hoxhaj went a step further. Selimi summed up the opposition’s position by arguing that Kosovo’s diplomacy under Kurti reached for propaganda instead of negotiation, while Hoxhaj contends that Kosovo has become a hostage of its own government’s confrontational policy. Both describe the defeat in Washington as a self-inflicted wound rather than outside pressure.

How Pristina lost its main ally

Parts of the Albanian and Serbian press link the cooling to the treatment of Serbs in Kosovo. In that reading, Washington is changing its stance toward Pristina partly because of the position of the Serb community, and not only because of a broader geopolitical realignment in the Balkans. Kurti’s government rejects those assessments and insists these are sovereign decisions taken in Kosovo’s interest.

In Belgrade, by our understanding, the moment is read as vindication of patient diplomacy. The corridors of Pristina, however, reveal a deeper anxiety: losing the status of the privileged US partner is, for Albanian politics, not a technical pause but a blow to a foreign-policy identity built on closeness to Washington.

It remains an open question whether the suspension of the strategic dialogue is the temporary product of a single political cycle or a more lasting turn. For Belgrade, the new partnership with the US is capital that still has to be converted into concrete results, and for Pristina the internal reckoning over responsibility has only just begun.

Will Pristina reconsider its course toward Washington, or will it keep looking for responsibility outside its own decisions?