The Long Shadow of the 1999 Kosovo War

The Contemporary Practice of State Recognition: Kosovo, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and their Aftermath

Whether Fabry is correct that, without the Kosovo precedent, Russia would not have recognized South Ossetia or Abkhazia (2008) (Fabry 2012), followed by Crimea (2014), as well as Donetsk and Luhansk (2022), is difficult to establish, but the argument has certainly been central to Russia’s attempts to justify recognising secessionist territories since 2008. On 11 March 2014, the Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council) of Crimea, the region’s assembly, adopted the declaration of the independence of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, a decision that led to the annexation of the region by Russia. In it, it referred to the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice according to which Kosovo’s declaration of independence was not in conflict with international law:

We, the members of the parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the Sevastopol City Council, with regard to the Charter of the United Nations and a range of other international documents and taking into consideration the confirmation of the status of Kosovo by the United Nations International Court of Justice on 22 July 2010, which states that a unilateral declaration of independence by a part of the country does not violate any international norms, make this decision jointly. (Verohovnoi Rady Avtonomnoi Respubliki Krym i Sevastopolyskogo gorodskogo soveta 2014)

This same link with Kosovo was also made explicit in Putin’s speech on 21 February 2022, in which he announced the recognition of the “People’s Republic of Donetsk” and the “People’s Republic of Luhansk” (Putin 2022). In his speech aired on 24 February 2022, in which he announced plans to conduct a “special military operation”, he couched the declaration of war in unsubstantiated claims of genocide, thus evoking a human rights-based claim that observers have described as “self-consciously mirror[ing] the justifications given by NATO leaders for bombing Yugoslavia” (McGlynn 2022). In the weeks preceding the Russian invasion, Putin evoked the NATO intervention against Serbia, referring to it not just as the first big war in Europe (which it was not) but also as the original sin that brought about a renewed East–West conflict (Gessen 2022). Journalist Leonid Ragozin aptly described it as “Putin’s Kosovo cosplay” (2022).

Putin mirroring NATO’s claims to justify the war against Ukraine could easily be dismissed as a gross distortion of reality. While the legal foundation for NATO’s intervention was shaky, the substantial human rights violations and ethnically motivated oppression by the Yugoslav and Serbian governments against Albanians were well documented, as was the unwillingness of the regime to agree to a diplomatic solution. In this special issue, Kathleen Zeidler sheds light on mass rape as a weapon of war in Kosovo and how this crime has been addressed by international and domestic actors.

Furthermore, the repressive policy of the regime followed the experience, less than four years earlier, of genocide, ethnic “cleansing”, and massive war crimes committed by the Bosnian Serb army, which was equipped, funded by and integrated into the Yugoslav army. There was a reasonable basis for the intervention of NATO, and the UN Security Council that could have authorized the operation was blocked due to Russian and Chinese opposition. The contributions by Ruža Fotiadis on Greece and by Robin Hering and Bernhard Stahl on Germany illustrate how, even among NATO members, the question of intervention was contested and that a joint position was not easily achieved. Without engaging in the longer discussion on the justifications of the war, as well as the challenges associated with NATO’s intervention, there are important differences to Russia’s intervention in Georgia and Ukraine, not just in terms of jus ad bellum, i.e. the justification for waging war, but also jus in bello, i.e. the scale of war crimes committed by the Russian armed forces, as well as the goal of annexing territories by force.

Comparing different perspectives on the reasons for and outcomes of NATO’s intervention in the Kosovo War is the focus of this special issue—from the states on the “receiving end” of intervention, Kosovo and Serbia (contributions by Elisa Satjukow, Kathleen Zeidler, and Jelena Jovanović), to the effects on a neighbouring country such as Greece (Fotiadis), the contradicting views of the allies and opponents of NATO’s intervention, such as China (Yuguang Zhou) and Germany (Hering and Stahl), as well as the impact the intervention had on the language of securitization both domestically and internationally (Distler). It becomes very clear that from a Western perspective the war in Kosovo represented the short-lived peak of a unipolar world and a short intervention that ended ethnic “cleansing” in Kosovo and drew lessons from the war in Bosnia. On a larger scale, as Cameron Abadi (2019) argues in Foreign Policy, “[t]he Kosovo war also foreshadowed the return of great-power politics, spurring the rise of revanchist nationalism in both Russia and China that the West contends with today”. For some Russian analysts, the intervention in Kosovo was not seen as embodying the importance of ethics in international relations, but instead, “Russia has learned many lessons from Kosovo. Above all, the end justifies the means” (Arbatov 2000).

For Russia or China, both having opposed it, NATO’s intervention represents the pinnacle of Western unilateralism. The use of the defensive alliance in a war outside its territory and in protection of rights was viewed as a threat by both regimes, leading Russia to define a new security concept and military doctrine, which listed NATO expansion as a military threat (Sakaguchi and Kaguchi 2001, 11). Arguably, this marked the beginning of the strategic convergence between China and Russia, but also a turning point with both increasingly seeing the “West” as the main threat. As Yuguang Zhou shows in his contribution, China went beyond mere geopolitical and strategic interests and also appropriated the intervention domestically, turning it into an important memory trope. For Russia under Putin, who became prime minister in the aftermath of the war, Kosovo became a key feature in defining Russian relations with the West and justifying Russian policies towards its neighbours.

In Serbia, the Kosovo War marks the turning point when Russia and China started to become important allies. Of course, efforts by the Serbian leadership to garner support from Russia and China did not start with Kosovo. Indeed, there are important historical links, at least in the case of Russia (see Bechev 2017). Famously, Borisav Jović—the Serbian representative of the Presidency of Yugoslavia and a close associate of Milošević—flew to Moscow in March 1991 where he sought support from hardliners in the Soviet leadership. This mission was in vain, however, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union later that year, Russia had other concerns. Nor was Russia able to provide Serbia with much help in subsequent years. In the meantime, Mira Marković, the wife of Slobodan Milošević, was endeavouring to build closer ties with China. The reconnection between the two countries occurred in the shadows of the war in Kosovo, as Yuguang Zhou’s analysis aptly illustrates.

Ironically, for all the symbolic significance, Russia’s practical interest in Kosovo has been limited. During the war, in April 1999, the Yugoslav parliament decided to join the Union of Russia and Belarus. The unilateral decision of a dysfunctional federal state to join a dysfunctional state union was probably historically unique, and ultimately inconsequential ( Politika 1999). Later, the efforts of Russia and Finland helped broker the ceasefire between NATO and the Yugoslav government that brought about the international administration and the NATO-led KFOR mission in Kosovo under a UN Security Council Mandate. In early June 1999, after the ceasefire, Russia insisted on participating in the NATO-led peacekeeping operation that would be established in Kosovo through UN Security Council Resolution 1244. Russian peacekeepers in Bosnia and Herzegovina rushed to Kosovo to arrive before the NATO troops following the Kumanovo Agreement of 9 June 1999, which had effectively ended the Kosovo War. A small contingent of Russian peacekeeping troops was quickly deployed to Kosovo via Serbia to take over Slatina airport in Pristina. The aim of the move was not immediately clear, but appears to have been to push NATO to accept a Russian-controlled sector in the north of Kosovo, with the potential of preventing Kosovo’s independence or to act as a bargaining chip. However, the Russians lacked the infrastructure to control such a sector against the will of NATO and were also not interested in open antagonism towards the West in light of the important financial support they had received following the 1998 economic crisis. Eventually, Russia agreed just a week later that it would not have its own district, but Russian troops would be stationed in the sectors under the command of the NATO members USA, Germany, and France. In brief, Russian troops rushing to Pristina was a symbolic attempt to gain influence in the Balkans, but it failed to transform into sustainable leverage due to the situation in Russia itself and the limited commitment to confrontation on the ground (Brudenell 2008).

The Russian troops that entered Kosovo so demonstrably in 1999 were unceremoniously withdrawn in 2003. The withdrawal, as well as the operation under the umbrella of NATO, was an amicable affair (NATO n.d.) and revealed very little of the tension of the early incident at Pristina airport or the subsequent mythological importance that Kosovo achieved (NATO 2003). Almost simultaneously, Russian peacekeepers also withdrew from Bosnia and Herzegovina, ending the military presence of Russia in the Balkans. Russia’s support for Serbia regarding Kosovo only became relevant once Finnish president Maarti Ahtisaari, equipped with a UN mandate, proposed conditional independence for Kosovo, which was rejected both by Serbia and Russia. This led to the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo in February 2008, creating another link between the two countries.

Much later, the Russian army’s haphazard dash for Kosovo in 1999 would be reinterpreted in a film, reflecting the much closer Russian–Serbian ties and the centrality of Kosovo for both. In 2019, the Balkan Line (Balkanska Medja/Балканский рубеж) depicted an alternative reality made up of myths, falsifications, and the distortion of historical events. The film, a Russian–Serbian co-production, filmed with substantial funding from both governments, seeks to right the perceived historical wrongs. The film premiered in the Sava Centre, a prominent event location in Belgrade, on the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the NATO intervention.

In the film, a Russian special unit is tasked with seizing the airport in Pristina during the Kosovo War from a Kosovo Albanian gangster/warlord who is using the airport to incarcerate Serbs for organ harvesting. The Russian team seeks to hold the airport amidst efforts by the Kosovo Liberation Army to seize it, while waiting for the Russian army to arrive from Bosnia. From the bloodthirsty and cruel Albanian warlord to the ruthless NATO bombing, the movie reaffirms the distorted view of the conflict that had become widespread in Serbian and Russian public narratives.

While the movie could be dismissed as a fictionalized and idealized account of the war in a similar vein to the Rambo series in the United States, it is, however, as a state-driven project, less about forgetting an ignominy. The Vietnam War was seen as a defeat—both militarily and morally—and this was expressed in popular culture through movies such as Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now. Balkan Line, in contrast, was promoted and presented as a counternarrative to Western perspectives, allegedly providing a corrective.

The film was widely praised in Serbia and Russia and promoted by state officials, who highlighted its importance for both governments. This was clearly more than “just” a commercial enterprise. In fact, a critical voice among Russian film critics led to repercussions, underlining once again that this film was about reshaping the past. A Russian minister observed that “We have finally started making films that promote our values, truth and a different view of international relations” (Petrovskaja and Gočanin 2019). The film powerfully weaves together the strands of widely popular narratives about the war, including the organ-harvesting Albanian gangster Smuk whose commitment to nationalism is cynical and self-serving, the victimhood of Serbs in Kosovo, represented by the young, attractive Serb Jasna Blagojević, who is captured to have her organs harvested, and the heroism and selflessness of Russian soldiers in helping their Serb allies. The movie thus re-narrated Russian–Serbian relations from the official perspective of both Russia and Serbia, projecting the current relationship between the two through a fictitious rewriting of the events of 1999.

In this special issue, the narrative of Serbian self-victimization when it comes to NATO’s intervention in Yugoslavia is mirrored in three contributions, those by Werner Distler, Elisa Satjukow, and Jelena Jovanović. In fact, just like in the film, the Kosovo War has been re-narrated in both Russia and Serbia to serve the interests of the elites in the two countries. In Russia, the war served as (dubious) evidence enabling the country to externalize the responsibility for intervening and recognizing para-states in Georgia and Ukraine. For Serbia, it helped to create a narrative that excluded crimes committed by Serbian security forces in Kosovo and instead exclusively focuses on the NATO intervention (see, in particular, the studies by Elisa Satjukow and Jelena Jovanović). Lastly, Serbia and Russia are also connected through their rejection of Kosovo’s independence.

As the authors in this special issue comprehensively show, the Kosovo War now serves converging Russian and Serbian national narratives, which, however, still offer little insight into understanding its causes. In Serbia, this narrative ignores the root cause of the state’s policy of repression in Kosovo, while Russia instrumentalizes Kosovo in its efforts to create a sphere of influence beyond its borders and thwart the success of democracies that might become a threat by example.