Russians officials push for pursuit of Kosovo talks

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow was solidary with Serbia regarding the resolution of the Kosovo issue.

"We are solidary with the Serbian people when it comes to resolving the Kosovo issue exclusively based on international law," Lavrov said.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov said that the situation around resolving the status issue "has reached a critical point," stressing that Russia was convinced a compromise solution could still be found, but that it required the balancing of the negotiating process and stopping assuring Pristina that independence was predetermined.

"The reason for the dead-end we have reached lies in the lack of [our] partners' desire to do so. We would not want the parties involved to realize that an unlawful approach would be wrong only after events became irreversible," Titov said.

That is why Russia proposes the making of a "road map" that will define the stages toward the end goal - a compromise status solution, he pointed out.

Newly-appointed Russian envoy to NATO Dmitri Rogozin said that, by fighting for Serbia's sovereignty, Moscow was stepping up as a protector of international law, and underscored that the independence of Kosovo would be a precedent-making scenario.

"We will undoubtedly block any attempts to legalize that disaster, because the current architecture of Europe's security was paid for by the blood of World War Two. We lost so many people that we will, of course, protect it vehemently," Rogozin said.

The US and certain European countries have failed to impose a resolution in the UN Security Council that would guarantee Kosovo's independence. Due to their minority in the Security Council, Washington and its allies want to resolve the issue of Kosovo outside of the UN.

Download PDF document