The invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the NATO intervention to stop the Serb genocide on the civilian population of Kosovo are two completely opposite situations, just like the declaration of Kosovo’s Independence and Russia’s recognition of pro-Russian separatist regions in Ukraine also the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, as the referendum is considered to have been rigged.

In the case of Kosovo, after a nearly two-year war between Kosovo and Serbia who aimed at ethnic cleansing, ordered by Slobodan Milosevic, then President of Serbia, more than 15,000 Albanians were killed, and more than a million were expelled from their homes, causing massive destruction of homes and properties. The only armed resistance against the Serbian state was The Kosovo Liberation Army who then received air support from NATO, which Russia clearly opposed.

The war in Kosovo ended with the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement on June 11, 1999. Kosovo declared independence on February 17, 2008, nine years after the end of the war. Kosovo’s independence was legitimized by the International Court of Justice two years later, as the Serbian state had requested. The ICJ decision that Kosovo’s independence is in line with international law, proves that the case of Kosovo is not a precedent for any other case in the world. Therefore, Putin’s attempt to draw parallels between the two cases is simply an attempt to undermine the internationally recognized Kosovo Independence, and at the same time to denigrate the image of the ICJ that condemned last month the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a violation of international law.

Serbia voted in favor of Russia’s expulsion from the UN Human Rights Council over reports of serious systematic human rights violations and abuses in the war and unprecedented aggression in Ukraine, but that does not mean that Official Belgrade is harmonizing national policies with the EU. Immediately after the vote, Vučić said that Serbia was blackmailed by the EU, as he intended to abstain, but with the vote in favor of Russia’s exclusion from this council, he said that he prevented a “nuclear” attack of sanctions against Serbia. Double player Vučić, after giving the EU a vote in favor of Russia’s expulsion from the UN Human Rights Council, played the “carrot and stick” game against the EU. In a covert operation, he accepted HQ-22 anti-aircraft missile system, thus becoming the first country in Europe to use a Chinese anti-missile system.