The Russia-Ukraine Conflict Explained: Judge Dean Pineles
Judge Dean Pineles photo by Gillian Randall.
In his fascinating memoir, A Judge’s Odyssey, due out with Rootstock Publishing in July 2022, Judge Dean B. Pineles focuses not only on his domestic career, but also on his international rule of law work in Russia, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Kosovo. The intersection of these four countries provides a compelling explanation for the horrific events that are unfolding today as Russia invades Ukraine. Here are his own words on the subject, which will appear as the postscript to his memoir:
As the world recoiled in horror in late February 2022, Russia, without legitimate provocation, invaded Ukraine, a sovereign country, while the Western powers found common cause against Russia under the aegis of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This crisis was a long time in the making, with important historical antecedents, such as the fact that Ukraine was a republic within the former Soviet Union, and President Putin’s long-held ambition to recreate “Mother Russia.” But it is also important to understand that more recent history also plays an important part, in particular the war between Serbia and Kosovo and its aftermath, which has influenced Russia’s geopolitical strategy since the war ended in 1999.
In 1999, under the leadership of President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, NATO intervened with an intensive bombing campaign in the brutal internecine war between Serbia, a sovereign country, and its breakaway province of Kosovo, in which Serbia engaged in ethnic cleansing of the Albanian Kosovar majority. After 78 days, NATO prevailed and the war ended in June 1999, following which the UN took control of Kosovo, but its legal status vis a vis Serbia remained in limbo until 2008. Russia strongly opposed NATO’s intervention and has been Serbia’s staunch ally to this day. And, NATO continues to maintain a peace keeping force in Kosovo, called KFOR (Kosovo Force), in which the US participates. These events planted the seeds for the “Kosovo precedent,” which would rise up several years later.
At the time of the NATO incursion, Vladimir Putin was the Secretary of the Russian Security Service, and in August 1999 was appointed prime minister. Then the political merry-go-round began. Putin was elected president in May 2000, and served two terms until May 2008 when he was succeeded by Dmitry Medvedev who served until 2012. During Medvedev’s term, Putin was again the prime minister until he was re-elected president in 2012, and has served in that office ever since. Medvedev was recycled back to prime minister in 2012 until 2020. However, it has never been in doubt who held the real power.
In February 2008, just before Putin’s second four-year presidential term ended, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence from Serbia with the support of the US, the EU, and other countries. This watershed event infuriated Putin, and he vowed that it created a precedent which would circle back to harm the West. And it did so in short order.
Just several months later, in August 2008, after Medvedev had become president and Putin prime minister, Russia invaded the country of Georgia, a former Soviet republic which was leaning toward NATO and the EU, under the pretext that Russian speakers and passport holders in the breakaway province of South Ossetia were being threatened by the Georgian military. Russian tanks and military personnel quickly poured through the Roki Tunnel separating the two countries as if they had been waiting for this moment, and Russian forces quickly overwhelmed the Georgian military. Russia then recognized the independence of South Ossetia and another rebellious province, Abkhazia, and continues to do so to this day, although only a handful of other countries have joined in recognition. Thus, the Kosovo precedent was fully implemented. I was working in Georgia at the time.
In 2010, the International court of Justice, in a legal challenge brought by Serbia, ruled that Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence did not violate international law. Russia would argue that this result applies equally to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Then in 2014, during Putin’s return to the presidency, a restive province of Ukraine, Crimea, declared its independence from Ukraine following a welcomed incursion by Russian soldiers and a popular referendum by the citizens of Crimea. The written declaration of independence actually cites the Kosovo precedent (unilaterally declaring independence) as one of the justifications for breaking away from Ukraine. Crimea was subsequently incorporated into the Russian Federation.
In early January 2022, peaceful protests began in Kazakhstan, also a former Soviet republic, over the rise in gas prices, but quickly devolved into violence amid rising dissatisfaction with the autocratic government and economic inequality. The government cracked down brutally, but could not control the violence and called for assistance from Russia under their military alliance. Putin responded quickly and sent Russian soldiers to help quell the disturbance, resulting in over 200 dead and thousands of arrests. While this situation was not directly related to the Kosovo precedent, it clearly demonstrated that Putin was willing to use military force to prop up his fellow autocrats within the former Soviet Union and to crush any popular dissent, or liberalization as has occurred in Ukraine.
During the last eight years, Russian separatists have fought the Ukrainian military in the Donbas region of Ukraine, and the separatists have received support from Russia just across the border. One of Putin’s first acts after the invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022 was to recognize the independence of Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic, utilizing the Kosovo precedent as solidified during the war with Georgia.
There is an ongoing debate as to whether the events in Kosovo actually established a precedent under international law. Many argue that Kosovo was a unique situation, a one-off, because it was initiated and justified as a humanitarian mission limited to stopping the bloodbath and ethnic cleansing. But the concept remains alive at least in the mind of Vladimir Putin.
–Judge Dean B. Pineles, March 2, 2022
