Ukraine cannot be made to wear the "costume" of Kosovo!

Ilir Copja

Last week, talks were held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to find a formula accepted by both sides: Ukraine, Russia and approved by the US and the EU to end the three-year conflict in Ukraine. Achieving peace within the first hundred days of his presidency is one of Trump's "biggest bets" and the deadline is coming to an end. At the end of the meeting, a draft peace proposal drafted by the US was given to the representatives of the two countries in conflict to sign. This peace plan is fully consistent with President Trump's public stance: "Both sides must make concessions to reach an agreement."

European leaders, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have hailed the development as a step towards a comprehensive and lasting peace. Zelensky has expressed skepticism about Russia's intentions, describing the Kremlin's response as manipulative and tied to conditions that could delay or prevent a lasting agreement. Putin has expressed doubts about the possibility of effectively supervising a ceasefire and has called for conditions that could delay or prevent a quick agreement.

Are we going back to the last millennium? Doesn't this look like a first movie?

This US peace proposal resembles the Rambouillet peace proposal. The Rambouillet Conference, held from 6 to 23 February 1999 in France, was an international effort to resolve the crisis in Kosovo and end the war. The Kosovar side accepted the agreement on 18 March 1999, while the Yugoslav side rejected it. The parallelism between Ukraine and Kosovo is not accidental. President Putin himself made such a parallelism in 2014 to justify the unilateral annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, after the referendum. Like Kosovo then, Ukraine, despite the doubts cited above, has accepted the US peace proposal in principle. Zelensky gave his agreement after a long meeting between the Ukrainian and American delegations in Saudi Arabia. As a result, the US has decided to resume military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine.

The difference between these two similar scenarios is that Russia is not the Yugoslavia of 1999, fragmented and weakened by nearly nine years of internal conflict. Vladimir Putin, who at the time was director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia, a state that was part of the Rambouillet group, does not want to make the same mistake as Milosevic. President Vladimir Putin has expressed a willingness in principle to a ceasefire, but has imposed conditions that make the process more complicated. He has stressed that any ceasefire must lead to a lasting peace and address the root causes of the crisis.

In the event of unilateral signing of the peace proposal by Ukraine alone, what will happen?

When Yugoslavia did not sign the Rambouillet Document on March 18, 1999, it moved from “Force of Diplomacy” to “Democracy of Force.” On March 24, 1999, NATO began a bombing campaign against Yugoslav forces, which lasted until June 10, 1999. The Yugoslav scenario has been ruled out by both the US and the EU, because it would cause an open conflict between the world’s superpowers with devastating consequences for humanity. Despite the “immunity” to direct military intervention, failure to reach an agreement would expose Russia to equally serious consequences.

President Trump made it clear that the failure of the agreement and the failure of Russia to sit down for peace talks would lead to the imposition of the heaviest sanctions on it since the beginning of the war, and this position would also be maintained by European allies. The Russian failure to sign would justify the continuation and increase of military support for Ukraine by its allies.

Could Ukraine's journey to peace be similar to Kosovo's?

The answer, unfortunately for the Ukrainian people, is no. As I mentioned above, Russia cannot be pressured by bombing its territory, and sanctions, no matter how severe, will take time to have their effects on the Russian economy. Economic autarky would cushion the consequences of the “Economic Blockade.” Moreover, it is impossible for a resolution like UN Security Council Resolution 1244, adopted on June 10, 1999, to be adopted in the case of Ukraine, because it would also have to be signed by Russia as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

In the adoption of Resolution 1244, Russia voted in its favor, but in this case a resolution with the same content would conflict with its geostrategic and economic interests. In conclusion, we can say that it is part of human nature to compare current events with those of the past. Despite the parallels made recently between the two conflicts, they occurred in different periods and under different circumstances. The same “script” after more than a quarter of a century seems yellowed and wrinkled to produce the same result. The Italian historian Alessandro Barbero has said: “When history repeats itself, the first time it is like a tragedy and the second time like a farce.”