Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov compared Kosovo's independence with Russia's illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
"If you analyze American foreign policy, you see a pattern... When you like the results of the elections, you approve them, when you don't like them, you ignore them," Lavrov said in an interview with Tucker Carlson.
"When Kosovo unilaterally declared independence, there was no referendum. The Serbs then turned to the International Court of Justice, which ruled that when a part of a territory declares its independence, it does not necessarily have to coordinate with the central government," Lavrov continued.
He argued that the population of Crimea had participated in a legitimate referendum.
"But they said no, we cannot accept this because it is a violation of (Ukraine's) territorial integrity." The United Nations Charter is not about picking one thing or another. It should be respected as a whole," the Russian foreign minister said.
BGNES recalls that during the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Skopje (December 2023), Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow was not against a "Greater Serbia" and an exchange of territories in the Balkans.
Serbia refuses to join the EU's sanctions policy against Russia. Aleksandar Vulin, until recently head of Serbia's security service BIA and right-hand man of President Aleksandar Vucic, is considered the main conduit of Russian interests in the Balkans and sanctioned by the US and Britain. | BGNES
