MOSCOW, August 1./TASS/. De-escalation achieved around Kosovo does not pave the way for a long-term and stable solution of the problem, Russian Ambassador to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko said on Monday.

"When Serbian President Vucic speaks about de-escalation, of course what he means, at least in my understanding, is that there won’t be extreme developments and exacerbation at the moment, no bloodshed. There have been such fears this time and previously, this is not the first outbreak," the diplomat went on to say.

"As for the stable solutions, it is now difficult to see preconditions for finding sustainable solutions to the issues that caused this new outbreak of tensions in the north of Kosovo among the Serbs living in Kosovo," the diplomat said. Among them are "IDs and car registration, and many other issues whose pendency is also used by Pristina to make unilateral arbitrary decisions to squeeze them out of Kosovo," the diplomat told Rossiya-24 TV channel.

The ambassador noted that he referred not only to the territory in the north of Kosovo, where Serbs reside in a compact settlement, but also to the Serbian enclave. "So, the situation is extremely tense," he noted.

Tensions escalated dramatically in Kosovo and Metohija on Sunday after Kosovo police had closed a checkpoint on the administrative line with Serbia as part of preparations for the implementation of a ban on the use of Serbian license plates and IDs. In response, Serbs living in the northern part of Kosovo came out to protest and blocked major roads. Police officers and members of the NATO-led Kosovo Force international mission (KFOR) were deployed to a bridge across the Ibar River, which connects the northern and southern parts of Kosovska Mitrovica.

As a result of international efforts, Pristina decided to postpone the ban until September 1.