Together with the European Union and Serbia’s and Kosovo’s governments, the US will try to defuse the tensions in Kosovo’s north and enable the Belgrade – Pristina dialogue on the normalisation of relations to resume under the EU auspices, the State Department has said Tuesday.

Washington confirmed that the Deputy Assistant State Secretary for Europe and Euro-Asia Gabriel Escobar would be included in this week’s Belgrade – Pristina talks.

Moscow also reacted to the tensions in Kosovo’s north following Pristina’s reciprocal decision to demand temporary license plates for vehicles from Serbia but blamed exclusively Kosovo’s authorities for the situation.

Marija Zaharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said, “it was obvious the events are developing from bad to worse.”

According to her, “Pristina wants to have a full control on the whole territory and uses self-declared Kosovo ‘state’ repressive apparatus for that.”

Zaharova added that the Kosovo move did not receive an appropriate reaction from either Brussels or Washington, “not even a rebuke, and that was a high time to pressure Pristina to withdraw forces from the north and prevent the situation from turning into an open conflict.“

She said that NATO-led KFOR and the EU EULEX mission in Kosovo had the mandate to prevent lawlessness, adding the two bore full responsibility for protecting civilians, secure peace and safety.

The Kosovo-based KoSSev website said that the Russian ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Bocan -Harchenko visited the Jarinje crossing on Sunday, accompanied by Alexander Zinchenko, a Moscow’s Defence Ministry envoy and Serbia’s Defence Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic “to see for themselves what the current situation is.”