Milan Radoičić admitted being among paramilitaries who ambushed Kosovan patrol leading to four deaths

Police in Belgrade have arrested a Kosovo Serb politician four days after he admitted being part of a paramilitary group involved in a gunfight with Kosovan security forces in which four people died.

The clash threatened to ignite a wider eruption of violence, after thousands of Serbian troops were deployed to the Kosovo border. They were withdrawn only after the threat of sanctions from the US.

Swift western pressure on Serbia to step back from conflict does not resolve the chronic problems of Kosovo’s nationhood

The signs this weekend suggest that the immediate crisis over Kosovo has been defused. Some Serbian troops are pulling back from the border, and the threat of a return to armed conflict has receded for now.

The Biden administration acted decisively on Friday, drawing on some of the lessons from the run-up to the Ukraine invasion, going public with US intelligence on Serbian troops movements, and calling Belgrade to threaten sanctions and ostracism. The Nato peacekeeping force, Kfor, was immediately reinforced by the transfer of command of a battalion of British troops who were in the region for training.

Incident that left police officer and four attackers dead marks one of gravest escalations in violence for years

Kosovan authorities say they have recovered a large cache of arms after ethnic Serb gunmen stormed a village in the restive north at the weekend, battling police and barricading themselves into a monastery.

“We can easily say that the equipment was destined for several hundred other assailants,” the interior minister, Xhelal Sveçla, said on Monday.

Sunday’s attack marks serious escalation in Kosovo after months of mounting tensions with Serbia

A standoff between gunmen and Kosovo authorities at a monastery near the border with Serbia ended after four people were killed, authorities in Pristina said, after a police operation to regain control of the area.

“We put this territory under control. It was done after several consecutive battles,” Xhelal Svecla, Kosovo’s minister of internal affairs, told reporters after the standoff was over.

More than 30 Nato peacekeeping soldiers were injured in clashes on Monday after ethnic Albanian mayors took office

Kosovo’s prime minister has blamed violence in the north of the country on “fascist mobs” controlled by the government of neighbouring Serbia, and said he had rejected a US request to relocate recently installed mayors out of their official offices.

More than 30 Nato peacekeeping soldiers were injured in clashes on Monday, prompting the alliance to announce it would send another 700 troops to the country. Serbia’s president Aleksandar Vučić put his country’s army on high combat alert.