Lavrov disinforms again on Kosovo and Crimea

In another outburst of the Russian propaganda machine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has again used Kosovo as a weapon to justify Russian aggression.In an interview with Kommersant, Lavrov made disinformation about Kosovo’s independence.

Lavrov said:

“For the West, the right to self-determination obviously depends on who demands it. No, you can’t, you are Slavs and we have Albanians. This is racist stuff. We don’t owe anybody anything anymore, we will behave as we please.”

They didn’t care about that. They simply set the course for secession. What is more, there was no referendum in Kosovo. There, the UN representative, the disgraced former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, simply stood up and said that Kosovo was now independent – no referendum, nothing. The Americans told him, ‘This must be done’, and he did it,” Lavrov said.

https://www.alo.rs/vesti/svet/1050083/sergej-lavrov-uporedio-kosovo-i-krim-brutalno-opleo-po-zapadu-to-su-rasisticke-stvari/vest

https://www.blic.rs/vesti/svet/lavrov-ponovo-o-krimu-i-kim-samo-su-rekli-da-je-kosovo-nezavisno/3gswsw3

Analysis:

Although there was no traditional referendum, the road to Kosovo’s independence was a multi-year political, legal and international process. After brutal repression and war crimes against Albanians in the 1990s, including ethnic cleansing, NATO intervention in 1999 stopped the genocide and Kosovo was placed under international UN administration.

The Ahtisaari Plan also provided for mechanisms for the protection of minorities, a democratic framework and international supervision, which Serbia has never been willing to accept, since its aim was to continue its domination of the Albanian people.

Lavrov complains about the alleged violation of Serbia’s territorial integrity, while at the same time justifying Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, its annexation of Crimea and its attempts to destroy the country’s sovereignty. The Serbian-Russian narrative of a ‘violation of international law’ falls flat before its own crimes and the double standards propagated by Lavrov.

Lavrov deliberately omits the crucial fact that the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled in 2010 that Kosovo’s declaration of independence did not violate international law. In its opinion, requested by the UN General Assembly, the Court clearly stated:

“The declaration of independence of Kosovo on 17 February 2008 did not violate any rule of international law”

This judgment directly refutes all Lavrov’s claims about the “illegality” of Kosovo’s independence.

The full document is available here:

https://www.icj-cij.org/node/101885

/The Geopost/