Instrumentalizarea de către Rusia a precedentului Kosovo, componentă a politicii externe agresive a Kremlinului
Russia’s Instrumentalization of the Kosovo Precedent: a Component of Kremlin’s Aggressive Foreign Policy

Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to explain how Russia used the Kosovo-precedent formula in the conduct of its aggressive foreign policy in the last 22 years after Vladimir Putin became for the first time president of Russia. At first it investigates in detail the road to independence in the case of Kosovo and takes a look at the two different theories developed in this context, the special case argument and the theory of precedent. After finding that the Kosovo question is a political rather than a legal one and that the West has failed to explain without any doubt how Kosovo does not set a precedent for other conflicts, it shows how Russia had played the Kosovo card in three defining cases for the aggressiveness of its foreign policy: the recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia after the Russian-Georgian War in 2008, the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the recognition of the two separatist republics in eastern Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, followed by the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. In the end, it demonstrates that Russia had used the diplomatic inability of the West in its own favour, by violating basic international law and threatening peace and security in Europe.

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