> The worst thing in world today is to become the rope on which the imperial forces tug to prove their strength.
Not just today -- it's been a shitty position to find oneself in since the beginning of time. The only difference today is that we think of ourselves as above such things. But clearly we're not.
Big difference. Serbians under Milosevic were committing mass murder and ethnic cleansing (as they had done with Bosnia and Croatia few years earlier), while here, Ukrainians are not kicking people from Crimea out.
>Ukrainians are not kicking people from Crimea out.
Not yet. Still, the first act of the new regime was to revoke language rights from ethnic minorities, i.e. Russians in Crimea. When this sort of thing happens, ethnic cleansing is not far away.
That's one ridiculous exaggeration. Did you even read the law you are talking about, or you are just repeating somebody else's propaganda? The law was actually criticized by Ukrainian minorities -- by Crimean Tatars [1], by Association of Jewish Organizations and Communities of Ukraine[2], by Congress of Ethnic Communities of Ukraine [3]. But the most important detail -- the law in fact wasn't repealed! Acting president already vetoed its repeal.
Kosovo seems a much better example although I don't understand why NATO was able to enter the war against the wishes of Russia. Maybe nothing major happened because Serbia was sort of a Russian puppet state instead of being Russia itself? Or the lack of interesting resources in Kosovo? I have some remembering to do.
It was in 1999, when Russian strength and morale (political, economic and military) was at it's nadir. Compare the two wars in Chechnya with the war in Georgia.
Unless you subscribe to an extreme pan Slavophilism, in which the Balkans are legally and morally Russian territory, then no, Russia had nothing to say in the Balkans.
I wouldn't say it's the same as the number of Russians living in South Ossetia was and is really small (2 to 3%?). There are some similarities but even the way the war started seems different from what's happening in Ukraine. But it's useful context to have though.
