By Robb Frederick, Associate Director of News and Information,

Penn State Behrend

When Russia invaded Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin invoked the “Kosovo precedent,” a 78-day NATO air campaign over the former Yugoslavia. The attacks, launched on March 24, 1999, and led by the United States, forced Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw from Kosovo, where more than 10,000 Kosovar Albanians had been killed.

NATO had acted without approval from the U.N. Security Council, where Russia, a longtime Serbian ally, could have vetoed any resolution. The member nations argued that the international community was obligated to intervene and end a humanitarian crisis.

Russia had a different perspective.

“Russia’s view was that NATO had attacked a sovereign country and taken its territory,” said Jiří Nykodým, a postgraduate researcher at Masaryk University in Brno, in the Czech Republic. “Then, when it suited them, they argued the opposite – that Kosovo set a precedent for interventions that do not involve the U.N. Security Council. Russia used that as a justification when they annexed Crimea, and again when they invaded Ukraine.”

Nykodým studied the Kosovo precedent during a five-month visit to Penn State Behrend, where he served as a visiting scholar. He came to the college to work with Lena Surzhko Harned, an associate teaching professor of political science and an expert on Ukraine and the politics of the post-Soviet space.

“Her insight was very unique,” he said. “She recommended several books, including texts that were written in Cyrillic.”

Jiří Nykodým

A paper written by the pair was published by the European Consortium of Political Research.

As they examined the Kosovo precedent, Nykodým and Surzhko Harned looked closely at how it intersects with a diplomatic principle known as “responsibility to protect.” That policy, adopted at the 2005 United Nations World Summit, gives the international community the right to intervene when a state fails to keep its residents safe. The measure was a direct response to the war in Kosovo and massacres in Rwanda and Srebrenica.

“When you combine the Kosovo precedent and the responsibility to protect, you see there are limits to international law,” Surzhko Harned said. “Russia has used the Kosovo precedent to obstruct and undermine the law. Basically, they say to the west, ‘You broke the rules first.’”

Russia has blocked efforts to enforce the responsibility to protect, vetoing U.N. resolutions meant to address state failures in Syria, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Venezuela and Yemen. At the same time, Putin used the measure to justify military incursions into Georgia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, where he perceived a threat to Russian-speaking minority communities, alleging a genocide for which there was no evidence.

“Putin has been careful not to explicitly invoke the responsibility to protect,” Nykodým said. “He uses the same language, however. It allows him to operate in a grey zone, selectively applying aspects of international law that support his goals.”

The war in Ukraine raises the stakes for the international community, which will have to reassess its commitment to the responsibility to protect other nations, Nykodým said.

“The war makes this more relevant,” he said. “We are seeing the effects of the Kosovo precedent in real time, and at the cost of Ukraine’s sovereignty.”