Who is Putin's specialist who could take over Pristina in the Assembly of the Council of Europe?

Foto ilustracija: Telegraf/YouTube/Council of Europe

The news that Alexei Kondratiev, a member of the Council of Europe (CoE) could become the the rapporteur for the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe for Kosovo, has seriously shaken Pristina, to the point that some representatives of the provisional institutions there consider it a "security threat."

Outgoing Foreign Minister of provisional Pristina institutions Behgjet Pacolli thus believes that Pristina should not cooperate with Kondratiev, expressing his concern over this possible scenario on Twitter.

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"He is a national sec threat to Kosovo and we won't accept his potential appointment and neither cooperate with him. CoE should think twice before taking such a step," wrote Pacolli.

I have expressed my deep concern to @coe & #PACE for the candidature of Alexei Kondratiev as Rapporteur for #Kosovo. He is a national sec threat to #Kosovo & we won’t accept his potential appointment & neither cooperate w/ him. @coe should think twice before taking such a step.— Behgjet Pacolli (@pacollibehgjet) November 12, 2019

Who is Alexei Kondratiev, whom the media have already described as "a nightmare for Albanians"?

Kondratiev is a full member of Council of Europe's Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons and the Sub-Committee on the Middle East and the Arab World.

Photo: Profimedia/Zuma Press

According to an earlier report by the German newspaper Bild, the PACE Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy elected Kondratiev as "the rapporteur for Kosovo."

Officially, the rapporteur's task is to inform the Council of Europe of the development of democracy in the territory of Kosovo, and in particular about the dispute with Belgrade. The elected official will in effect, Bild writes, become the Council of Europe ambassador to Kosovo and gain, among other things, broad access to confidential information.

The candidates for the post include Bundestag MP Peter Beyer from the CDU, who has been working on the Kosovo and Serbia issue for several years, Dutch Representative Anne Mulder, and Russia's Kondratiev, who in June 2019 became a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

The German daily writes that Kondratiev was an officer of the special military service GRU until 2010, and that he from 1999 until 2001 served in Kosovo as a member of the Russian military contingent.

(Telegraf.rs)