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The unilateral declaration, on February 17, 2008, of the "independence" of Kosovo, an inseparable part of Serbia, which was literally pushed through by the leading Western countries, set an extremely dangerous precedent for the entire system of international relations and has already complicated the military-political situation not only in the western Balkans but also in other areas. Several instructive lessons could be drawn from this ill-considered step.

Lesson 1: No "Independence Bandwagon"

Much to the regret of a number of countries that backed the "Pristina declaration" of February 17, there was no jumping on the "independence bandwagon": By now, only a little more than 30 states of the world's 200 have welcomed this hasty act, even though Hasim Taci, the current prime minister of Kosovo and a former member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), had claimed before the declaration that its "independence" would be supported by over 100 states in the world, i.e., one half of the UN member states.
That optimistic forecast has failed to materialize.
Of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, only three have approved the province's "independence" - the UK, the US, and France, with Russia and China opposing it.
Of the 27 EU countries, only one-half of the organization's members have backed it, but at the same time a group of countries - in particular, Spain, Romania, and Slovakia - have stated in no uncertain terms that they will never recognize "the Republic of Kosovo," while officials in Cyprus, whose northern part was illegally occupied by Turkey in 1974, have pledged that Nicosia will not recognize Kosovo even if Belgrade does.
Commenting on Pristina's readiness to subsequently adopt Kosovo's "Constitution," the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on April 8 that it found incomprehensible all reports to the effect that the EU had allegedly approved the drafting and adoption of such a "Constitution": After all, as is known, there is no consensus on the issue of Kosovo's independence.
In a special statement on Kosovo's declaration of "independence" and its secession from Serbia, adopted on February 18, 2008, the Federation Council and the State Duma said that Kosovo's separatism would have had no chance if it had not from the start been backed by Western states, primarily the United States. An attempt was made to upset the balance between law and force in international affairs (the document said), to destroy the importance of negotiations as a just method of conflict resolution, to ignore the legitimate interests of one of the parties to the conflict, and to suppress the ongoing violations of human rights on an ethnic basis.
Both houses of the Russian parliament said that the leaders of states that have provided support to the Pristina regime and backed Kosovo's "independence" are directly responsible for the effective disruption of the negotiating process and will also bear the entire responsibility for the inevitable aggravation of ongoing and the eruption of new territorial conflicts in the world, as well as for the spread of radical ideas and political trends resulting from the Kosovo precedent. Both houses drew attention to Resolution 1595 (2008) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which, on behalf of all European nations, highlighted the need "to secure the continuation of the talks on the basis of the UNSC Resolution 1244 and the attainment of a compromise solution in the near future, with a view to preventing Kosovo from becoming a powder keg." Having shared the position of the parliamentary forum of the most representative European organization, both parliamentary bodies stated that the leaders of those countries that had provoked the disruption of the negotiating process on a settlement of Kosovo's status had thus set themselves in opposition to the interests of European nations.
It seems that consistent support for Kosovo's "independence," in particular, by the US, is not the main goal of their current or future policy in the Balkans: It has long been aimed toward asserting their military-strategic positions there. The self-proclamation of Kosovo as "an independent state entity" was only designed to facilitate Pristina's negotiations with Washington on expanded military and military-technical cooperation with the "new" Kosovo, as well as to provide a politico-legal framework for the implementation of the Pentagon's global plans to project American military power in this region.
Obviously, the US is attempting to use Kosovo's territory to expand the North Atlantic alliance's sphere of influence to the western Balkans and the adjoining south European regions, and also wants to strengthen its military base infrastructure in the region. This is evident from, among other things, the fact that the US has built one of its largest military and air bases in Europe, Bondsteel, in Kosovo (near the town of Urosevac), reinforcing it with another two combined arms military bases near Dragash and Gnjilane in the eastern part of the province.
All these installations give the Pentagon additional opportunities to control the situation in the Black Sea and Mediterranean region, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East, supplementing the network of new US military sites deployed in Bulgaria and Romania in the form of naval and air bases.

Lesson 2: Gross Violation of International Law

On the other hand, those states that are opposed to the proclamation of Kosovo's "independence," especially countries that have ethnic problems in their own territories, believe with good reason that this action is seriously at odds with several fundamental international documents, specifically:
- the UN Charter, in particular, the principle of the sovereign equality of States;
- the Declaration on Principles of International Law, adopted by the UN back in 1970;
- the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (1975);
- basic OSCE documents: the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (1990) and the Charter for European Security (1999);
- five resolutions of the UN Security Council, adopted in 1998 through 2008, including the well- known Resolution 1244 (adopted in June 1999) and Resolution 1785 (approved in November 2007);
- and finally, the Guiding Principles for a Settlement of Kosovo's Status, approved in November 2005 by the Contact Group, comprising Russia, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, the US, and France (all these countries except Russia hastened to recognize the province's "independence," completely forgetting about the existence of the document that they had previously approved).
In particular, the Declaration on Principles of International Law states that a territorial entity may only acquire the right to secede and establish an independent State in the event that the rights of its people have been grossly and systematically violated by central authorities.
The declaration of Kosovo as an "independent" State has violated two key principles of the Helsinki Final Act that laid the groundwork for the postwar political settlement in Europe, specifically the principles of the inviolability of frontiers and the principle of respect for territorial integrity of states on the continent: "The participating States will respect the territorial integrity of each of the participating States. Accordingly, they will refrain from any action inconsistent with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations against the territorial integrity, political independence or the unity of any participating State, and in particular from any such action constituting a threat or use of force. The participating States will likewise refrain from making each other's territory the object of military occupation or other direct or indirect measures of force in contravention of international law, or the object of acquisition by means of such measures or the threat of them."
Resolution 1244 does not contain a single reference to the province's "independence." The document, which was unanimously approved by all five members of the Security Council (including those who hastily recognized Kosovo's February "independence" - the US, Great Britain, and France), only speaks about "substantial autonomy," "self-government in Kosovo," and "meaningful self-administration for Kosovo." Furthermore, this wording is contained in three places - the preamble, and two annexes to the resolution.
Serbia's territorial integrity was recently upheld in the aforementioned Resolution 1785 of the UN Security Council. It reaffirmed "its commitment to the political settlement of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, preserving the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all States there within their internationally recognized borders." It should be noted that this provision was unanimously approved by the Security Council at a time when categorical demands of unilateral "independence" for Kosovo were coming from a number of Western capitals.
It should be recalled that UN Security Council resolutions are binding on the member states, unlike, for example, resolutions passed at UN General Assembly sessions, which have the status of recommendations.
The "independence" provision is also absent from the Guiding Principles for a Settlement of Kosovo's Status, which unequivocally declare the need to implement Resolution 1244. They also say that the settlement of the Kosovo issue should be fully in accordance with the international standards of human rights, democracy and international law, and contribute to regional security, while "the territorial integrity and internal stability of regional neighbors will be fully respected."
In addition to a large list of acts in international law, the Kosovo leaders, with the connivance of a number of Western countries, ignored 110 specially formulated international standards on the normalization of the political, social, and economic situation in the province, approved by the international community several years ago. Despite the numerous calls from the UN, the EU, the OSCE, and a number of other international structures to focus on compliance with these standards, by the start of 2008, the Kosovo authorities had only met 7 percent of them.
It could also be recalled that all of these standards were classified into eight groups of specific demands concerning the functioning of democratic institutions, the strengthening of law and order, ensuring the freedom of movement across the province's territory, guaranteeing the return of refugees and internally displaced people, developing the economic system, protection of property rights, promotion of inter-communal dialogue and finally, the need to regulate the activity of the Kosovo Protection Corps.
It should be noted that originally, the issue of determining Kosovo's status was based on a fairly logical formula - "standards before status." Although the advocates of granting Kosovo "full independence" subsequently managed to have that formula transformed into the "status with standards" slogan (it needs to be pointed out that no decision in writing was made in that respect), no one has ever waived the Kosovo leadership's obligation to comply with all standards without exception.
Representatives of certain Western countries have been constantly attempting to evade putting on paper specifically which standards the Kosovo leaders have complied with and which they have not. Obviously, such glaring ambiguity was designed to push through some vague compliance formula - something like "compliance in general," which would enable them to cover up the real military-political and socio-economic situation in the province.
The unilateral declaration of Kosovo's "independence" effectively buried compliance with the remaining 93 percent of standards.
The proclamation of the province's "independence" will, without a doubt, go down into textbooks and all sorts of reference books on international law as an example of imperial thinking, a manifestation of the policy of dictate and arbitrariness in international affairs, when, contrary to the will of the overwhelming majority of Serbia's population and virtually all of Kosovo's ethnic minorities, the province, whose territory accounts for 15 percent of Serbia (approximately one-third of Belgium's territory), was declared separate from the main part of that sovereign state - a full-fledged member of the UN and many other international organizations, whose territorial integrity and post-WWII state frontiers have never been challenged by anyone.

Lesson 3: The Wrong Negotiating Model

Right from the start, the negotiations on a settlement of Kosovo's status, which were launched in February 2006, had a clearly defined mandate: They were only oriented toward determining the province's future "status," not the declaration of its "independence." Nevertheless, Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland who was put in charge of the "status settlement process" and who had previously shown his anti-Serbian attitude on the Kosovo issue in the course of the 1999 negotiations, before the "status" process had begun, addressing a news conference on November 11, 2005 in Helsinki made no secret of the fact that in working out recommendations on the province's status, the EU was to play a important role, while NATO was to play a central role.
It was no accident that later, in his 58-page plan for a Kosovo settlement, officially entitled The Comprehensive Proposal for the Kosovo Status Settlement, which he first presented to a Contract Group meeting in Vienna on January 26 and then in Belgrade and Pristina, on February 2, 2007, despite objections from Serbia and a number of other states, he spoke out openly for granting the province "supervised independence," which over time would become full independence. In effect, the former Finnish president proposed annexing a part of a sovereign state's territory by non-military means.
It was proposed that the supervisory/regulatory mechanism be organized as a multi-tier structure. Kosovo's administrator was to be an International Civilian Representative (ICR) who would have the status of a special EU representative appointed by the International Steering Group, comprised of "key international participants," while it was unknown who exactly would appoint or select them.
The International Civilian Representative was to be granted supranational functions, for example, the rights to approve Kosovo's new Constitution and to have the final say in the interpretation of civilian aspects of a settlement. He was also to have unspecified powers to take measures to ensure the effective implementation of a comprehensive settlement and ensure verification of compliance. The representative would be able to review or revoke decisions made by the Kosovo authorities if such decisions were deemed to be at odds with the spirit and letter of "a comprehensive settlement."
Therefore, according to "the Ahtisaari plan" (which, incidentally, failed to receive complete support at the UN Security Council, where it was only approved by five of its 15 members), the future International Civilian Representative for Kosovo was to be granted powers excluding any political, administrative, legal, or other control functions over the province on the part of Serbia.
The Kosovo Force (KFOR) was to be tasked with ensuring security and stability, supervising security forces, and organizing the protection of specified Serbian Orthodox Church sites (but only at the initial stage of the implementation of a comprehensive settlement plan).
At the same time it was proposed that a new civilian/police EU mission be deployed in Kosovo with "executive functions" in ensuring the rule of law, public order and security, and with a numerical strength of up to 2,000 police, legal experts (prosecutors, judges) and customs officers as well as a certain number of administrative/technical personnel from EU and other states.
The cumbersome administrative/supervisory mechanism was further compounded by the involvement of the OSCE, which was to monitor the implementation of the comprehensive settlement plan through a vast network of its field offices.
Despite its heavy promotion and some additional explanation subsequently provided, the general impression from "the Ahtisaari plan" was negative: That "plan" did not contain any compromise elements and was unbalanced, since it made provisions for measures beneficial solely to the Kosovo Albanians, not to the province's ethnic minorities. It infringed on Serbia's legitimate territorial and sovereign rights, while its implementation would have created a dangerous precedent in breaching the fundamental principles and norms of international law.
The results of negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina in 2006 and 2007 would have been far more impressive had Kosovo Albanian leaders not constantly received destructive signals from some Western capitals supporting the idea of Kosovo's "independence" and when leading Western countries oriented Pristina toward only one possible outcome: independence from Serbia in any form.
Quite obviously, Kosovo was a test case for the possible annexation of other territories, based on a clear, stage by stage plan: First, under the pretext of a pressing need to overcome the effects of "a humanitarian catastrophe" or "ethnic purges" in a certain region, its ethnic composition is altered sharply by "pushing" a previously dominant ethnic group outside that region, which is then replaced by another group; and then international negotiations on "a political settlement" are organized under the auspices of some pro-Western mediator who successfully destroys the possibility of reaching a reasonable compromise in the course of these negotiations; and eventually the "independence" of such a territory is proclaimed.
Lesson 4: The Province Was not Ready for "Independence"

Despite the substantial financial and economic aid provided to Kosovo by the EU and many Western countries on the national/ethnic basis in the past eight years (over 2 billion euros, but in effect only to areas populated by Kosovo Albanians), the province has never been ready - not even now - for any form of "supervised" state independence, even if one could hypothetically assume that Serbia agreed to that.
The situation in the province remains unstable, a fact that is recognized in all weekly reports by the KFOR situation center.
Neither the local Kosovo authorities nor the international peacekeeping and police forces are in a position to ensure reliable security throughout the province, especially outside the concentrated settlements of non-Albanian ethnic groups, without implementing the key provisions of Resolution 1244, in particular in so far as concerns ensuring the security of the Serbs and other non-Albanian ethnic groups, as well as the return of internally displaced people and the search for missing persons.
Since "independence" was proclaimed, the level of security there has in fact declined; the limited freedom of movement for ethnic minorities has only been preserved in 33 enclaves. The remaining representatives of ethnic minorities in the province are being subjected to discrimination in the socio-economic and legal spheres. There is often no legal recourse against the unlawful acquisition of their property and real estate by ethnic Albanians under pressure and by threats.
To date, no action has been taken to address the problem of security escorts for Kosovo's ethnic minorities outside their enclaves to ensure access to essential services, in particular visiting relatives, going to hospitals, and traveling to educational establishments.
A working group on ethnic and national communities and minorities to assess the needs for military and police escorts for ethnic minorities outside their enclaves, which was established in 2001 on the initiative of the regional administrator of the UN mission in Kosovo, has not proposed any effective means of resolving the problem.
International peacekeeping and security forces, as a general rule, are reluctant to make available their subunits to provide escorts to ethnic minorities in Kosovo, citing the lack of manpower and the need to deal with the higher-priority tasks of ensuring security in the province. The province's Serbian population has been literally "sealed off" in their enclaves scattered around the province - so much so that not even the 16,000-strong KFOR contingent is able to ensure their complete security and freedom of movement between these enclaves. Well, that is hardly surprising, given that KFOR servicemen spend 60 percent of their in-service time on ensuring their own security.
As a result, ethnic Serbs are unable to gain full access, for example, to healthcare institutions or educational establishments, visit their relatives, or travel abroad.
Yet another big problem is enforcing effective control of the Kosovo-Macedonia border across which militants are still infiltrating and arms are being smuggled. Over the past eight years, international military and police forces have only been able to seize several thousand illegal weapons, but mostly outdated models. At the same time, in the estimate of the KFOR command, there are still around 500,000 firearms of various calibers illegally circulating in the province, the majority of which are stashed away by Kosovo Albanians, and which can easily be used against the province's ethnic minorities.
If the estimate of such a huge arsenal is more or less accurate, the results of KFOR measures to search for and seize illegally held firearms in the province, as well as of all sorts of sporadic "arms surrender campaigns," appear to be rather inadequate. The KFOR command needs to continue active and regular operations to search out and seize illegally circulating weapons, extending them to new sectors and populated areas, especially in border areas and insurgent bases. In the political realm, measures need to be taken to ensure a broader involvement of the UN, the OSCE, and the EU in monitoring the prevailing military-political situation in the Kosovo-Macedonian border area, as well as ensuring effective control over the effective and irreversible seizure of illegal weapons and ammunition.
One distinguishing feature of the current situation in Kosovo is that in the past eight years, only around 6 percent of displaced people and refugees of the 226,000 who fled the province (3 percent, according to the Serbian Orthodox Church) have returned to their homes in the province. As if it was not enough that no one can guarantee their security, they simply have no place to return to: Their destroyed homes are not being rebuilt, while the lion's share of funds provided by Western countries for the construction of new housing is being used to provide accommodation to ethnic Albanians.
Action must also be taken to return the homes to their lawful owners or to pay them monetary compensation for the lost property. According to the UN Mission in Kosovo, to date, up to 40 percent of cases of the illegal seizure of Kosovo Serbs' homes have yet to be settled.
The level of unemployment in Kosovo is still one of the highest in Europe, reaching 70 percent. True, among the achievements of the past few years, civil servants' wages have been raised to an average of 200 euros a month. At the same time, according to World Bank statistics, approximately one-half of the province's population continues to live below the poverty line; furthermore, the level exceeds 60 percent among the Serbs.
Organized crime, corruption, trafficking in people and drugs are still rampant. In the scale of the last mentioned problem, Kosovo exceeds all other drug trafficking routes on the European continent. According to Interpol, up to 90 percent of the entire illicit drug transit to Europe goes via the province.
After eight years of operations, the two main civil missions in Kosovo (UN and OSCE missions) have yet to start implementing a program of national reconciliation between the province's Albanian and non-Albanian population, even though such an initiative was put forward by the regional center of the OSCE mission in Kosovo back in the summer of 2001 and has since been sitting on the mission leaders' desks.

Lesson 5: The Threat of the Repetition of a Kosovo "Scenario"

The Kosovo precedent carries the threat of the province's territory being used for the implementation of more large-scale military-strategic plans by the United States and its close NATO allies. Nor is it possible to completely rule out that yet another forward site of the UN strategic air defense system could be deployed there - one aimed against Russia, in addition to those that Washington intends to create in Poland and the Czech Republic.
The negative consequences of the Kosovo precedent also consist in that the Kosovo Protection Corps, built on the former expansionist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and preserving virtually intact its entire organizational and command structure, as well as its 5,000-strong personnel, is legally operating in Kosovo. Arms and military equipment stored at NATO bases in Kosovo can be transferred to the Corps practically at any moment. From a legal perspective, it is difficult to find fault with such a scenario since the military-technical agreement on Kosovo, signed in the summer of 1999, did not make provisions for the KLA's complete disarmament but only for its "demilitarization," which Western representatives understood as license for that military grouping to retain a variety of weapons. Soon after the declaration of the province's "independence," Washington suggested that these forces should be placed under NATO supervision and be trained by instructors from alliance member countries.
One can also hardly ignore the fact that the province's separatist moves could provide an additional impetus to the insurgents of yet another "national liberation army" operating in the border area between Kosovo and Macedonia (it is able to bring as many as 18,000 men under arms on short notice), as well as to the mercenaries of the even more militant Albanian National Army which continues to beef up its force in Kosovo areas adjoining Macedonia and in border areas in Macedonia, targeting the Presevo Valley bordering Kosovo's administrative boundary, and the Serbian-Macedonian state border.
The declaration of Kosovo's "independence" can bring about a change in the established borders in the region. Many analysts believe that as a result of this move, within the next decade, "not even two, but three Albanias" would appear, while "a third Albania" could emerge as a result of a drastic change in the demographic situation in Macedonia in favor of local ethnic Albanians, who make up as much as one-fifth of Macedonia's population.
According to an opinion poll conducted by the Krasnaya zvesda daily in late March of this year, 39 percent of respondents believe that Kosovo could become a springboard for action by radical Islamic organizations, while 48 percent suppose that the province could become the cause of a new war in the Balkans, with only 10 percent convinced that the province will emerge as a democratic state.
What is especially disturbing is that KFOR, comprising 24 NATO member countries and 10 non-NATO countries, is becoming involved in an effort to provide military protection to supporters of its "independence" and to confine the Serbs and other ethnic minorities, opposed to the implementation of the unlawful February 17 declaration, to their enclaves, while the United States has started additional deliveries of arms and military equipment to the province.
Maybe even if they did not wish to, the NATO countries have caused yet another "headache" for themselves in Kosovo (after Afghanistan and Iraq), which, according to a number of Western experts, "could in the long term cost the alliance its unity." Some of the NATO member countries, for example, Spain and Greece, whose contingents have been deployed in the province (sixth and seventh largest contributors to KFOR, respectively), are confronted with the problem of protecting its "independence" in the situation where they have officially refused to recognize it. As some Washington analysts justly point out, had the Kosovo parliament not receive the tacit (or perhaps explicit. - V. K.) approval from a number of leading NATO countries - specifically the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, and Italy, whose military contingents make up two-thirds of KFOR's 16,000-strong corps - Pristina might not have proclaimed its independence. Most probably, never.
In a bid to consolidate Kosovo's "independence" as soon as possible and much as possible, George W. Bush, a month after the publication of the February 17 "Pristina declaration," issued orders that Kosovo leaders be provided not only with economic but also with military and military-technical assistance, as well as with some "defense services."
The US's decision on the delivery of weapons to Kosovo caused strong protests both in Belgrade and in Moscow. Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica was critical of the US administration's move, describing the president's decision as "a new, deeply erroneous step by the United States since the unilateral declaration of Kosovo's independence." The Serbian head of government stressed that "Kosovo needs not new weapons but new negotiations." According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, such an action is unlikely to add to regional stability. "Rather, the opposite is true," he said. The minister recalled that the only lawful foundation for resolving the Kosovo situation is Resolution 1244, which does not permit the creation of an army in the province or arms supplies except to international forces.
In a commentary published on April 8, the RF Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that a part of Kosovo's population that does not accept the self-proclaimed "independence" will also not accept the province's future Constitution-based system. As a result, the situation will aggravate further. Therefore, instead of accelerating the creation of the formal trappings of an illegal state entity, consideration needs to be given to finding an acceptable solution, which can only be achieved through dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina.

A Possible Solution

The UN and its Security Council, the EU, the OSCE, NATO, and other international and regional organizations as a whole need once again to carefully analyze the balance of forces that has resulted from Kosovo's "independence" in this unstable, troubled and ethnically and religiously diverse part of Europe. The creation of an "internationally recognized" state entity - i.e., "the Republic of Kosovo" - on Serbia's territory and contrary to Serbia's will is simply absurd, to say nothing about the fact that promotion of national, ethnic and religious exclusivity, as well as the re-carving of interstate borders without the consent of states concerned, is an extremely dangerous trend in the present-day world.
The problem is far too serious to be ignored. It would be counterproductive to manipulate the fate of this long-suffering province, which had to live through Turkish invasion in the Middle Ages and NATO bomb attacks in the late 1990s, merely on the basis of subjective approaches. An attempt to legitimize the ethnic and religious superiority of one nation at the expense of other national, ethnic and religious groups is a very risky strategy.
Therefore, in looking for a solution to the Kosovo problem, it is necessary to take into account all objective political, legal, economic, and other factors in the present and future situation in the province.
A balanced decision on the settlement of Kosovo's status can only be based on the principle of "substantial autonomy" as part of Serbia, in accordance with the "more than autonomy but less than independence" formula, acceptable both to the Kosovo Albanians and to the Kosovo Serbs, as well as to Serbia as a whole. The "Rubicon" of Kosovo's "independence," created by some Western countries, led by the United States, or any other alternative - "broad autonomy for the province as part of Serbia" - must be crossed without any tragic upheavals.
Russia favors the continuation of dialogue between the parties concerned and is open to the discussion of its format and modalities. In the interest of invigorating the negotiating process, as in resolving other crisis situations, Moscow has proposed working out a "road map" that would take into account the sides' legitimate interests and the priority factors in a Kosovo settlement.
According to Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Moscow will continue to closely monitor the situation in the province and to counter the attempts to legitimize the pseudo-independence that has been proclaimed and the attempts to push the UN mission out of the province.
An effective scheme for a Kosovo settlement cannot be found outside the framework of the UN Security Council.
As for the Kosovo issue, no matter in what form it could be raised at the Security Council in the next several months, Russia is determined to stand firm on its position about the illegitimacy of the province's self-proclaimed "independence" as being at odds with international law and in contravention of the UN Charter and the main Security Council decisions, in particular Resolution 1244. Russia will continue to stress the illegitimacy of the unilateral steps taken by Western countries to close the EU civilian/police mission without the Security Council's approval or the consent of the Serbian government.
If necessary, Russia is ready to insist that the Kosovo issue be considered at Council consultative meetings or to demand the convocation of emergency sessions of the UN Security Council, as was the case in February. Needless to say, it intends to closely coordinate its efforts with Serbia and other countries, which understand the entire danger of "the uniqueness of the Kosovo precedent."
It is also essential to conduct active dialogue with those states that connived at Kosovo's separation from Serbia in breach of the numerous principles and norms of international law, and recognized its "independence."