On March 24, 1999, when the campaign of air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY, composed of Serbia and Montenegro) began, NATO shattered the fragile balance that had existed since the end of the Cold War. With this outright aggression against a state that in no way threatened them, the Western powers broke the rules of international law in two ways. On the one hand, the "Kosovo war" was not authorized by the UN Security Council, the only body empowered to authorize external armed intervention. On the other hand, as soon became apparent, the aim of this war, presented as "humanitarian", was to amputate a sovereign state from part of its territory, which was formalized in 2008 by Kosovo''s proclamation of independence, encouraged, even organized, by most of the Western powers.

March 1999 also saw the first enlargement of NATO since 1982, with the incorporation of three former Warsaw Treaty members (Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland) into the Atlantic Alliance, in flagrant violation of the promise made to Gorbachev in 1990 by several Western leaders, including James Baker, the US Secretary of State, who had assured him that NATO would "not expand an inch eastwards"¹.

Moscow''s warnings ignored

While the war enabled Washington to reassert its role as leader over its European vassals and as global policeman, it seriously damaged relations with Moscow, which suddenly realized that international law was no safeguard for its Western partners. Despite the "shock therapy" and collapsing standard of living imposed by Boris Yeltsin''s regime, the Russian population had previously retained certain illusions about Western benevolence towards them. NATO''s 78-day bombardment of a "brotherly country" with a Slavic and Orthodox majority, and an ally in all the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, made it clear that it was a power hostile to the majority of Russians². In August 1999, a totally discredited Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin to head his government, leaving him in the presidential chair nine months later. Alongside a spectacular economic recovery, Moscow began to openly express its concerns about US unilateralism.

But Washington ignored these warnings, invading Afghanistan and Iraq in turn. Although some European countries condemned the latter move, it deepened Moscow''s distrust of the Western camp. The new NATO enlargement of 2004 - seven new members, including three ex-Soviet republics - was openly denounced by Russia as a threat to its security. In his famous Munich speech of February 2007³, Putin no longer hesitated to denounce NATO''s expansion, and called for "universal and indivisible" security, a concept virtually incomprehensible to Western leaders. But there was no doubt that the East-West idyll had been laid to rest.

The shepherd''s answer to the shepherdess

Following Kosovo''s proclamation of independence in February 2008 and its immediate recognition by the majority of NATO members, in violation of the agreement that had put an end to the 1999 war⁴ , Moscow showed that it no longer intended to remain at the stage of verbal protests. A few months later, in August, the Russian response became clearer: attacked by central government forces, two secessionist regions of Georgia - Abkhazia and South Ossetia - called on the Russian army, which repelled the attackers, while the Kremlin recognized the independence of these two entities.

While the fate of Serbia and Kosovo showed Russia (and the rest of the world) that the West favors the "right of the strongest", it is understandable that Moscow could not tolerate NATO''s encircling maneuvers. In April 2008, the Bucharest Summit decided that two other USSR republics, Ukraine and Georgia, would "become members of NATO" at an unspecified date. While the election of Viktor Yanukovych to the Ukrainian presidency in January 2010 temporarily shelved this plan to NATOize the country, it was fully revived when he was overthrown in February 2014 during the Maidan events, followed by the emergence of a Russophobic, pro-Western government. What followed is well known: annexation of Crimea, where Russia concentrated most of its fleet, support for the Donbass insurgents, truncated Minsk agreements, and the current war.

The war aims put forward by Moscow - denazification, demilitarization, support for Russian-speaking Ukraine - are certainly secondary to the major "red line" of avoiding further NATO expansion. If Kiev were to join, Western troops and armaments would be deployed along more than 1,500 kilometers of the Russian border. The methods chosen by Russia are questionable, to say the least, but the Western bloc, which has been using and abusing these methods since the bombing campaign against the FRY twenty-five years ago, is in a particularly poor position to criticize them.

1. M. E. Sarotte, Not One Inch. America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate, The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series, Yale University Press, November 30, 2021.
2. Roman Shumov, Ruins of Yugoslavia: How Russia learned that NATO poses a threat, Russia Today, March 24, 2024.
3. Vladimir Poutine, Russian president''s speech on security, World Perspective, Feb. 10, 2007.
4. Resolution 1244 (1999), adopted by the Security Council at its 4011st session of the United Nations, June 10, 1999.