NOTE: This “analysis” of Russia’s sending a force into Kosovo in 1999 is an almost complete inversion of the truth. The author writes: “The Russian military and intelligence services had clearly decided that pushing in their own forces and changing the facts on the ground were the best ways to recapture what had been lost at the negotiating table.” [My emphasis]
The truth is the exact opposite. The Russians sought (in the end, unsuccessfully) to enforce what had been agreed to a the negotiating table: that (a) the international force deployed in Kosovo would be a non-NATO force and (b) that Kosovo would remain part of Serbia, with autonomy.
As noted: “The [Russian] move sparked furious contingency planning at NATO headquarters. ‘The danger was that if the Russians got in first, they would claim their sector,’ said NATO’s military commander General Wesley Clark about the potential for the Russians to partition Kosovo, ‘and then we would have lost NATO control over the mission.’” But NATO was never supposed to have had control over the mission. Usurping that role was a necessary step to the goal of detaching Kosovo from Serbia, which had been intended all along, despite explicit commitments to the contrary.
JGJ
The Center for American Progress article cited above is here:
The First Time Putin Tried to Invade a Foreign Country.
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