Kosovo will declare independence at February 17th

[Tribun]

Link to BBC

Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci has given the clearest indication yet that the province will declare independence from Serbia on Sunday.

Mr Thaci said Sunday would be another day of calm during which institutions would be engaged in "implementing the will of the citizens of Kosovo".

Nothing Belgrade could do would have an impact on developments in Kosovo, he said without confirming the move.

Hours earlier, the EU approved sending a police and justice mission to Kosovo.

The 2,000-strong mission will begin deploying to the region from next week.

It will be headed by retired French Lt Gen Yves de Kermabon, who was commander of the Nato mission in Kosovo in 2004-2005.

Veteran Dutch diplomat Pieter Feith has been appointed the EU special representative in Kosovo.

The US and most EU states are preparing to recognise Kosovo quickly, but Serbia and Russia strongly oppose the move.

The EU waited diplomatically until Serbia's pro-Western President Boris Tadic was sworn into office on Friday before giving the final green light for the deployment of the mission, says the BBC's Oana Lungescu in Brussels.

The decision was formalised by a so-called "silent procedure", under which members of the 27-nation bloc had until midnight on Friday to voice objections.

The 2,000 EU police and customs officers, judges and prosecutors are tasked with helping to prevent human rights abuses and ensure that Kosovo's fragile institutions are free from political interference.

Crucially, the mission will be able to intervene in sensitive areas such as fighting corruption and organised crime and catching war crime suspects.

While Germany and Italy are the biggest contributors, all EU members except for tiny Malta will take part, as well as non-EU countries like the United States, Turkey and Croatia.

Our correspondent says it is a clear signal to Serbia and Russia, which fiercely oppose Kosovo's independence and insist the presence of the EU there will be illegal.

Limitations

Serbia has threatened to use diplomatic and economic measures against Kosovo, though it has ruled out using force

The EU mission, known as EULEX, is to be deployed over four months, and is expected to take over from the United Nations by early June.

The UN has administered Kosovo since a Nato bombing campaign in 1999 drove out Serb forces.

The US and a number of EU countries, including the UK, are expected to recognise Kosovo quickly.

A UN plan on independence includes limitations on independence.

These include supervision by an international presence; limited armed forces; strong provisions for Serb minority protection; commitment to multi-ethnic democracy; and neither Kosovo nor any part of it will be allowed to join another country.

Looks like were will have a new state in Europe tomorrow. However, it was only a matter of time. After the number the Serbs did there, I could never see the population wanting to return to Serbia.

It's ironic that the "Greater-Serbia" policy of 20 years actually only had the result of the serbian territory shrinking to the barest minimum. I guess that's what you recieve for trying to be the big king on the cost of others.

[MKSheppard]

And the next day, a Soviet....err....Russian Guards Tank Army crushes it.

[Sidewinder]

Here's hoping the Russians and Serbs aren't crazy enough to support Serbian insurgents in Kosovo, which will give the Kosovars an incentive to engage in ethnic cleansing against the Serb minority. If anything, Russia and Serbia should offer aid and show the Kosovars that Slavs are NOT Nazi-like monsters who rape, murder, and loot their way through non-Slav peoples, but I don't think there's a chance that'll happen within the next few decades.

[Sea Skimmer]

Here's hoping the Russians and Serbs aren't crazy enough to support Serbian insurgents in Kosovo, which will give the Kosovars an incentive to engage in ethnic cleansing against the Serb minority.

They ALREADY fucking did that. Huge numbers of Serbs were driven out of the place right after NATO forces entered, and those that remain typically live in segregated communities, while Muslim militias described as terrorists by the US state department in 1999 roam at will. NO good is going to come from this and it’s only going to encourage more pointlessly stupid separatist movements

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Everyone does realize that the Serbia-majority region is going to immediately counter-secede and start a guerrilla war while the Serb minority in the rest of the country flees to that region, or Serbia, even if the Serbs themselves don't engage in military operations. Right? Because that will happen, after the violent and inhumane ethnic cleansing operations of the KLA following the Serb government expulsion, which we pretended weren't happening because they were being inflicted on the "bad guys" (in reality the citizens who frequently had nothing to do with the conflict).

Also, it will be very amusing to watch Russia curbstomp Georgia and annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and probably annex the Transdniestr, too.

[Adrian Laguna]

Question: why is this secession being done along provincial lines rather than ethnic ones? Is everyone allergic to redrawing borders or something?

These include supervision by an international presence; limited armed forces; strong provisions for Serb minority protection; commitment to multi-ethnic democracy; and neither Kosovo nor any part of it will be allowed to join another country.

So no counter-secessions allowed? I'll laugh if that happens anyway and we get a situation like with Morrocco and Western Sahara where one country controls another (part of another in this case) but everyone pretends otherwise.

Also, it will be very amusing to watch Russia curbstomp Georgia and annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and probably annex the Transdniestr, too.

Eh what? Where'd that come from?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Also, it will be very amusing to watch Russia curbstomp Georgia and annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and probably annex the Transdniestr, too.

Eh what? Where'd that come from?

It's what the Russians may very well do in retaliation.

[Vympel]

It's what the Russians may very well do in retaliation.

Yeah, they've been hinting at it for months. The last I heard about it was several days ago, saying that Kosovo being recognized as an independent nation would be a precedent that would change their policy. Frankly, I'll find it hilarious - there are already big Vladimir Putin posters in South Ossetia (IIRC) declaring him their President, they carry Russian passports ...

Everyone does realize that the Serbia-majority region is going to immediately counter-secede and start a guerrilla war while the Serb minority in the rest of the country flees to that region, or Serbia, even if the Serbs themselves don't engage in military operations

That could be tons of fun. If the Albanians are really stupid, they'll try and take over the Serb-majority region by force (which will, as far as it's inhabitants are concerned, remain part of Serbia), and they'll hit the wall called the Serbian military.

[Adrian Laguna]

It's what the Russians may very well do in retaliation.

I don't quite follow why. Kosovo decides to secede so Russia invades Georgia? I don't think beating-up your next door neighbor to intimidate someone living several blocks away is likely to accomplish much. Unless the Russians are just looking for any convenient excuse, I can certainly get behind that, everyone knows that IT ALL BELONGS TO MOTHER MUSCOVY!!!

[Vympel]

I don't quite follow why. Kosovo decides to secede so Russia invades Georgia?

The regions Duchess is referring to are thoroughly anti-Georgian and pro-Russian. It wouldn't be an invasion, it'd be a parade.

New York Times

MOSCOW — Russia held a high-level meeting with the leaders of two breakaway republics in Georgia on Friday, and vowed to increase its support for the separatists if Kosovo declared its independence and was recognized by the West.

The meeting, coupled with vocal warnings in Russia’s Parliament that it would react strongly to a declaration of independence by Kosovo, threatened to push the Kremlin and the West into a fresh and potentially volatile standoff over the status of separatist territories in Georgia.

Kosovo is expected within days to declare its independence from Serbia, Russia’s traditional ally.

The Kremlin has long objected to the move, and even threatened to retaliate by recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two breakaway regions it supports inside Georgia’s internationally recognized borders, as independent states.

Russia has in the past several years granted Russian citizenship to almost all residents in the separatist enclaves. In anticipation of further engagement with the regions, Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, met here with the presidents of the regions’ de facto governments.

Mr. Lavrov then issued a stern but vague statement saying Russia was prepared to expand its case diplomatically in the days ahead. “The declaration and recognition of Kosovar independence will make Russia adjust its line toward Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” he said in a statement.

Increasing financial assistance is among the steps Russia might take, he said.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia border Russia along the Caucasus ridge, and broke from Georgia after brief wars in the early 1990s. Their status has simmered as a source of contention and ethnic tension in the years since.

Both regions have declared self-rule, but in fact are managed as Russian protectorates. The standoffs, labeled “frozen conflicts,” have been sources of unsuccessful international mediation and worries of renewed fighting.

Georgia in recent years has strongly protested the Russian support, accusing the Kremlin of hypocrisy.

It has noted that Russia has supported separatists inside Georgia while holding Russia’s own sovereignty inviolable and waging a bitter war and counterinsurgency against separatists on the other side of the Caucasus ridge, in Chechnya.

The military, diplomatic and public relations campaigns in the region have all the while been layered with intrigue.

One of the most prominent fighters in the Abkhaz war against Georgia, for example, was Shamil Basayev, the Chechen separatist and terrorist who became Russia’s most wanted man.

Georgian officials have said that Mr. Basayev’s career as a terrorist began as a proxy in Abkhazia for Russia’s secret services, and that his presence in the war was a mark of Kremlin sponsorship and duplicity. Mr. Basayev, the eventual architect of the worst acts of terrorism in post-Soviet Russia, died in 2006.

Since President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia rose to power in 2003 and vowed to unify the country, there have been occasional skirmishes and mortar and rocket barrages along the borders between the de facto regions and areas under federal control.

The latest meeting between Mr. Lavrov and Eduard Kokoity, the president of South Ossetia, and Sergei Bagapsh, the Abkhaz president, ended without a concrete plan for all of the steps ahead, Irina Y. Gagloyeva, a spokeswoman for the Ossetian government, said by telephone.

But she said that Mr. Lavrov pledged Russia’s strong support, and the three sides did agree that any questions of the regions’ own statehood would be raised incrementally if Kosovo was recognized by the West.

The first step, Ms. Gagloyeva said, would be to press Georgia to engage in negotiations at the presidential level to lead to a step-by-step settlement of the lingering disputes.

“We see Kosovo as a precedent that attracts attention to our problem,” she said. “It is a very serious problem of the unrecognized state, to which the big powers and major international organizations have a biased approach.”

I'd love to see the West bitch and moan about it and do their best to sputter and complain about how what's good for Kosovo is bad for everyone else.

[MKSheppard]

Screw that useless "we declare this part of Russia.....since time immemorial" part!

I want BMDs driving through Kosovo, as Il-76s parachute thousands of VDV men onto the place.

[Adrian Laguna]

Ah I see it now. The Russians are saying that turnaround is fair play. If the West can recognize the independence of separatist provinces in Serbia, then they can do the same to separatist provinces in Georgia.

Screw that useless "we declare this part of Russia.....since time immemorial" part!

The history of Russia in a nutshell is one long exercise in trying to put as much land as possible between Muscovy and everyone else. Declaring adjacent lands to be part of Russia is what they do.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Also, it will be very amusing to watch Russia curbstomp Georgia and annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and probably annex the Transdniestr, too.

Why would that happen right now?

[Vympel]

I want BMDs driving through Kosovo, as Il-76s parachute thousands of VDV men onto the place.

LOL. That would have them fighting NATO though. Camp Bondsteel is still there, isn't it?

If the Russians really thought it necessary to send military forces (and I don't think they would) they'd just airlift them into Serbia and go by road into the Serb-majority region that borders the rest of Serbia, and dare anyone to try and pass through.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Also, it will be very amusing to watch Russia curbstomp Georgia and annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and probably annex the Transdniestr, too.

Why would that happen right now?

Nevermind; thanks to Vympel for posting an article.

[Sidewinder]

Everyone does realize that the Serbia-majority region is going to immediately counter-secede and start a guerrilla war while the Serb minority in the rest of the country flees to that region, or Serbia, even if the Serbs themselves don't engage in military operations. Right? Because that will happen, after the violent and inhumane ethnic cleansing operations of the KLA following the Serb government expulsion, which we pretended weren't happening because they were being inflicted on the "bad guys" (in reality the citizens who frequently had nothing to do with the conflict).

So basically, the actions of a few violent members of a certain group aroused anger and hatred towards that group, and eventually, violence towards every member of that group, especially the non-violent members? Sounds like what Muslims are going through in the US and Europe, or what Americans are going through outside of the US, thanks to US foreign policy since the Cold War began.

[hongi]

I'd actually support the Serb-populous parts of Kosovo that are contiguous with the Serbian border counter-seceding.

[K. A. Pital]

Nothing good will come out of this.

As for Russia attacking anyone over this... Just stop it with the wankfest.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Why would Russia recognise the two eastern regions of Georgia as independent states, when they might as well reintegrate them into Russia proper?

[Sea Skimmer]

Why would Russia recognise the two eastern regions of Georgia as independent states, when they might as well reintegrate them into Russia proper?

Because independence is what the people fighting in those areas want; not unity with Russia, and Russia sure doesn’t need more wars to fight. It’s pretty simple. Many of these areas have been fighting for independence for the last 200 years, ever since Russia first began claiming the Caucuses in fact.

[K. A. Pital]

Because independence is what the people fighting in those areas want; not unity with Russia

They want to become Russian satellites, however.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Because independence is what the people fighting in those areas want; not unity with Russia

They want to become Russian satellites, however.

Ah... Autonomous regions, with Russian Passports...

[Sea Skimmer]

Because independence is what the people fighting in those areas want; not unity with Russia

They want to become Russian satellites, however.

I’m sure, after all these states would be so tiny even the small Georgian military would be a tremendous threat; but a Russian satellite still has an awful lot more autonomy then say a Russian Republic would.

[K. A. Pital]

Ah... Autonomous regions, with Russian Passports...

I can't really blame them. Georgia is not far from the lowest low of post-Soviet shitholes. Lots of Georgians proper do much business with Russia, due to it being just about the only source of income (the remains of industrial and public service infrastructure in Georgia is rapidly crumbling and by now it resembles something like DPRK on the night map):
1993 - 2003, night lighting in Georgia

[Vympel]

Because independence is what the people fighting in those areas want; not unity with Russia,

Well minus the folks who put up the big poster of Putin calling him their President a while back.