After Kosovo: Will others follow the example?

Friday 22 February 2008 senior researcher Svend Aage Christensen, DIIS, was interviewed by Danish Broadcasting Corporation for the news programme Deadline 17 of the DR2 TV channel. A stream of the interview is kept here for a while.

The topic was whether the recent Kosovo declaration of independence would strengthen secessionist claims for recognition in places like Abkhazia, South-Ossetia, Trans-Dniester etc.

Christensen said that Russia had both offensive and defensive interests of a mixed nature: political-economical, security policy and nationality policy. On balance, he thought that Russia would play it safe and give priority to its global long-term political-economical interests and avoid playing too aggressively any cards that could backfire and exacerbate its own problems with nationalist extremism and xenophobia between ethnic groups inside and outside the CIS.

Still, keeping in mind the upcoming NATO Summit in April in Bucharest where Putin has announced his participation, in the short run Christensen expected the Russians to keep up some of the political steam generated by events in and around Kosovo in order to influence the political climate surrounding the NATO Summit – but to play their offensive economic, legal and political cards pretty cautiously and responsibly in this respect.

Christensen’s guess was that at least in the short term we may see some lip service but hardly any serious Russian support for secessionist claims of the above nature.

Contact: Senior researcher Svend Aage Christensen,

See also Niels Aadal Rasmussen, Kosovo Independence - de jure versus de facto (DIIS Report, download here).

Additional information of historical interest:

DANISH HUMANITARIAN AND REHABILITATION ASSISTANCE TO KOSOVO, 1999-2003 (2004/5)
On April 7th, 1999, the Danish Parliament granted the first DKK 180 million to the victims of the Kosovo conflict. Since then about DKK 1.4 billion has been provided for assistance in the Kosovo crisis. A key objective of a Danish evaluation is to identify “lessons learnt” from the Danish intervention in Kosovo in order to improve the policy, strategy and operational approach to forthcoming Danish interventions in conflict situations. The evaluation report can be downloaded here.

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