Russia has consistently taken the position that sovereignty for Kosovo, which remains a province of Serbia under a UN protectorate, could have negative consequences for conflicts in the former Soviet Union that erupted in the early 1990s.
"Should 'sovereignization' of the province [of Kosovo] be imposed on Serbia, as [our] Western partners are attempting to do, a clear precedent will be set in international law that cannot but be projected onto other frozen conflicts," Grigory Karasin told Izvestia. "This applies not only to the post-Soviet space, but also to other regions."
The deputy minister said that unlike the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, Kosovo independence was being claimed not by a republic as part of a federation but by an autonomy as part of a federation constituent member.
"Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transdnestr have the same status," he said, referring to two similar conflicts in Georgia and one in Moldova.
He accused those who saw Kosovo as a "unique" case of either forgetting or deliberately ignoring differences in approaches to conflicts around the world. The West has supported the Georgian government's attempts to bring breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia back under its control, as well as Moldova's efforts to return unrecognized Transdenstr to Chisinau's fold.
"This approach erodes trust in the international community, leading to chaos and instability in international relations," Karasin told Izvestia. "Needless to say, this is unacceptable to Russia,"
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned last month against any double standards in regard to the unrecognized republics in Georgia and Moldova.
Putin said there had always been contradictions in the principles of international law.
"[Russia] wants and will insist on such decisions to be based on a universal principle to prevent such cases when approaches to the regions like Kosovo are different from those to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, which is incorrect," the president said during a Web cast.
