How the Snipers on the Maidan Figure in the Kosovo Precedent

The big Ukraine story that the Gray Lady is featuring this Sunday is actually a good one. Written by Peter Baker, "Sovereignty vs. Self-Rule: Crimea Reignites Battle" explores the applicable precedents of the Wilsonian doctrine of self-determination. The one that gets the most ink, and the one that makes Obama's national security public relations man Benjamin Rhodes defensive, is Kosovo. If Kosovo can secede from a democratically elected government why can't Crimea?

Kosovo declared independence in 2008. The United States under George W. Bush recognized it, as did Britain, France and Germany, but Russia adamantly rejected it, as did Spain. The International Court of Justice later ruled that Kosovo’s declaration was legal. 

“We never saw it as setting a precedent, but there were some nations that saw it that way and still do,” said James W. Pardew, who was Mr. Clinton’s special representative for the Balkans.

John B. Bellinger III, who was the top lawyer at the State Department under Bush, said: “We were very careful to emphasize that Kosovo was a unique situation. We were fond of saying it was sui generis — and it did not create a precedent that would likely be replicable anywhere else.” 

That is not how the Kremlin sees it. Ever since, Russia has cited Kosovo to justify support for pro-Moscow separatist republics in places like Georgia, where it went to war in 2008 and recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia over Western objections.

But here is the "money" passage:

“Kosovo is very much a legitimate precedent,” said Dimitri K. Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest, a Washington research organization, agreeing with Moscow’s argument. “Independence was accomplished despite strong opposition by a legitimate, democratic and basically Western-oriented government of Serbia.” By contrast, he said, the new pro-Western government in Kiev “lacks legitimacy,” since it came to power by toppling a democratically elected president.

The Obama administration maintains that the cases cannot be compared. Serbia, White House officials said, lost its legitimacy and right to rule in Kosovo by its violent crackdown. Despite Russian claims, there has been little, if any, independent evidence of such a campaign against the Russian-speaking population in Crimea. 

“There’s no repression or crimes against humanity that the government in Kiev has committed against the people of Crimea,” Mr. Rhodes said. “There’s no loss of legitimacy.”

But what if the "legitimate" government in Kiev came to power by means of a violent crackdown, a putsch? This is obviously what happened. And it is getting trickier for the Obama administration since a leaked phone call between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and EU foreign affairs representative Catherine Ashton reveals that the sniper fire that killed both the protesters and police on the Maidan had the same "handwriting," meaning it came from the same snipers.

Why would the snipers, if they were Yanukovych goons, as the Obama administration prefers, gun down police? They wouldn't. Therefore the sniper fire was an act of provocation designed to create mayhem, mayhem used by the putsch leaders and their Western allies to delegitimize the Yanukovych government.

The Guardian ran the story last Wednesday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is now pressuring the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to investigate. Agence France Presse has the story. Lavrov is making his request because the putsch government refuses to investigate.

I assume the Gray Lady will maintain her blackout of this story for as long as she can, even up to and including the OSCE actually conducting an investigation (maybe then she would assign it a sidebar). In any event, add this sniper issue to the March 16 Crimea vote to align with the Russian Federation (not to mention the enormous funding issues facing the putschists, ably outlined in a story by Steven Erlanger, as well as the political rise of anti-EU-integration Right Sector) and you have a train coming round the bend that is sure to fly off the rails.