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ANALYSIS: NATO attacks as justification for Russia?

2024-03-25 09:22:56Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

ANALYSIS: NATO attacks as justification for Russia?

With airstrikes on targets in Serbia, NATO countries wanted to force the president of the RF of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, to stop the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and prevent the humanitarian disaster that the United Nations feared in the Kosovo region.

However, there was no UN mandate for the military strikes, in which many civilians were killed despite the use of precision weapons. NATO countries, under the leadership of US President Bill Clinton, gave themselves a mandate for a "humanitarian intervention" that was necessary to prevent worse things from happening and to implement UN resolutions that Yugoslavia did not comply with. had implemented.

But even after 25 years, most jurists who deal with international law believe that NATO's mission was not in accordance with international law.

Unlawful thought – dominant

"If you ask about the prevailing opinion, then it was a violation of international law, because it was previously said that military measures against Serbia will be undertaken only with the approval of the Security Council. Other reasons cannot be considered, at least. according to prevailing opinions", says Professor Wolff Heintschel von Heineigg in an interview with DW. Wolff Heintschel von Heineigg teaches international law at the Viadrina European University in Frankfurt am Oder.

The reasons given by Western politicians for NATO's intervention ranged from protecting the population of Kosovo, stabilizing the situation in the war-torn Western Balkans, and the blockade of the UN Security Council by Russia and China. Even the then German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joschka Fischer, spoke of a morally necessary intervention to prevent massacres like those in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "These are all good reasons, but international law is not created by a small group and it is not customary law. We need a large majority of states. And we simply haven't had that," says international law expert Wolf Heinchel von Heinig.

NATO's attacks on Yugoslavia, which ended on June 10, 1999, when Slobodan Milosevic surrendered, were a kind of original sin. "We heard the arguments of the eight NATO countries that were involved in this Kosovo campaign again when Crimea was annexed," says Wolff Heinchel von Heinig, describing the aftermath. When it annexed Crimea in 2014, Russia invoked precedent allegedly to protect the Crimean population from perceived threats. The same pattern was repeated after the attack in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that the people of eastern Ukraine had asked for help and invoked the UN Charter as justification for a "special military operation".

The judgment of international law expert Wolf Heinchel von Heinig for these reasons is clear: "Even if the humanitarian intervention is recognized, the Russian arguments are certainly absurd. It cannot be a question of the conditions that prevailed at that time in Kosovo. I only mention the infamous ethnic cleansing, which did not happen in Crimea or in the southeast of Ukraine."

The Balkans and Ukraine cannot be compared

Therefore, the situation in the Western Balkans 25 years ago cannot be compared with today's Ukraine. Russia's invasion and war against Ukraine remains illegal under international law. "This is the draft law for Kosovo, we are now faced with the same arguments that we made then, even if the facts are of course fundamentally different," said Heinchel von Heinig from the European University in Frankfurt on the Oder.

The legal investigation into NATO's operation against Yugoslavia failed before the United Nations Tribunal for Yugoslavia, as well as before international courts. In the current case of the war in Ukraine, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ordered in March 2022 that Russia cease all combat operations in Ukraine. However, Russia ignores it. The main session related to the Genocide Convention is still ongoing./ dw


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