The Kremlin said on Monday it was closely monitoring what it called a 'potentially dangerous' situation in Kosovo, where ethnic Serb gunmen stormed a village at the weekend, battling police and barricading themselves into a monastery.
Russia does not recognise Kosovo, which has a majority ethnic Albanian population, as an independent country and traditionally supports Serbia, with which it has close religious and cultural ties.
Kosovar police units retook the monastery late on Sunday after three attackers and one police officer were killed. They were securing the village in northern Kosovo on Monday. But some 50,000 Serbs in the north have never accepted Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence and still see Belgrade as their capital, more than two decades after a Kosovo Albanian guerrilla uprising against repressive Serbian rule.
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