Is Russia the Right Nation to Be Carrying the Serbs’ Ball?

From the outset of the war in Kosovo, the Russian government objected in the strongest possible terms to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s bombing of Yugoslavia. At first, many Western leaders and analysts believed that the Russian objections could be ignored with impunity, because the evils of the Serbian-led slaughter and expulsion of ethnic Albanian Kosovars seemed so manifest, and Russian isolation and weakness so evident.

But when NATO’s air campaign failed to produce quick results, two things became clearer: The Russian government and people have a radically different view of the Kosovo war than do most Westerners; and that if the war is to end with a negotiated solution, rather than a NATO military victory, Russia’s position as the only major European nation supporting Yugoslavia is central to crafting any end to the fighting. It is thus important to understand the reasons for Russia’s stance on Serbia. History, current political considerations and even the structure of the Russian Federation all pushed the Kremlin toward supporting Belgrade.

The Balkans have always been crucial to Russia. Historically, economic considerations have been less important than religious, cultural and military-strategic ones. The Russian people received their brand of Eastern Orthodox Christianity a millennium ago via Balkan Slavic missionaries, and though the religious tie is no longer as strong as it once was, it exerts a steady gravitational pull. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexi II visited Belgrade last month to pray with packed crowds in that city’s cathedral and to underline his church’s support for fellow Steven Merritt Miner, a professor of Russian history at Ohio University, is the author of “Selling Stalin,” about Soviet propaganda.

Slavic Orthodox Christians. Back home, Russian believers have raised money, and even volunteers, to assist the Yugoslav war effort.

Strategically, the Russians have long regarded the Balkans as vital, particularly Serbia, the first Orthodox, Slavic nation to regain its independence from the Ottoman Turks. Russian czars consistently sought to prevent any outside great power from dominating the peninsula. They are no less eager today to prevent a U.S.-led alliance from doing so. During the 19th century, Russia’s leaders, notably the Pan-Slavs, saw themselves as “elder brothers” of the smaller Balkan Slavic peoples. From 1828 to 1914, they fought four major wars--and suffered disastrous defeats in the Crimean War and World War I--to contest control of the region. Although Russia fought these wars to advance its own strategic interests, a seductive mythology exists among Russian nationalists to the effect that their countrymen have always shed their blood to defend their weaker Slavic brethren.

That these historical and emotional ties remain strong is starkly demonstrated in a recent survey of Russian public opinion, published in the Economist magazine. Most of the world watches the murder and expulsion of ethnic Albanians with horror and lays the blame squarely on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his regime. Russians, by contrast, blame the Albanians for the current conflict in Kosovo; only 2% believe the Serbs are responsible. Even more startling, 87% favor sending Russian antiaircraft missiles to Serbia, in violation of their own government’s pledges to the contrary and in the face of a NATO embargo; 71% support a political union among Russia, Belarus and Serbia, for which arrangement the lower house of the Russian parliament, the Duma, recently voted; and 42% actually claim that they are willing to volunteer to fight on the Serbs’ behalf. Even if these figures contain a large dose of armchair bravado, they nonetheless reflect a sharply different view of the war as seen from the East.

Not all the reasons for Russia’s support of Serbia lie in the past or in some mystical-historic bond linking the Slavic peoples. The NATO assault on Serbia raises a number of troubling precedents for Russia’s current or future rulers, of whatever stripe. Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the secession of the principal non-Russian republics from the union, the Russian Federation remains a patchwork quilt of minor nationalities. Boris N. Yeltsin’s government prosecuted a bloody war against Chechen secessionists with a level of ferocity not yet approached in Kosovo, with deaths estimated at between 50,000 and 100,000.

The Western press never took up the cause of the Chechens, and the NATO powers stood quietly by as the slaughter continued for months, afraid of throttling Russia’s fledgling democracy by defending the rebels.

To Russians, the Kosovo operation suggests at least the possibility that things may be different in the future. Knowing the internal threats they face, Russian leaders refuse to accept the notion that outside powers can intervene at will in a sovereign state to sort out a violent secessionist struggle. Instead, Russia insists that such decisions can only be made by the United Nations, where Russia still exercises a veto.

Today, Russians helplessly watch the eastward extension of their victorious Cold War rival NATO, and many of them fear that what NATO does to Serbia today, it might do tomorrow to Russia itself. Although such fears seem far-fetched to Western ears, they are real and rooted in strong memories of the Nazi invasion and the 27 million dead that the Soviet Union suffered in World War II. Furthermore, these fears have been fanned shamelessly not only by the nationalist and communist press, but also by Russia’s official organs, which have recycled outlandish Serbian propaganda unfiltered. Thus, according to the official “Voice of Russia” radio service, NATO--not the Serbs--has deliberately driven ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo in order to create a pretext for its air assault; indeed, the whole operation is seen as a practice run for an attack on Russia itself.

For the time being, calmer heads have prevailed in Moscow. The chaos of the Russian economy and the sad state of its armed forces limit Moscow’s diplomatic muscle. NATO leaders are hoping to capitalize on Russian weakness and need for Western economic aid in order to press Moscow to abandon its Serb clients. But the Russian position is not as weak as it appears. President Bill Clinton and his NATO allies have stuck their heads into the equivalent of a diplomatic bag: Although a decision to prosecute an air war, without the leavening of ground troops, has minimized allied casualties, it has also been insufficient to prevent Milosevic from emptying Kosovo of its Albanian population. As allied unity eroded with each report of Serb civilian casualties, NATO looked desperately to a once-ignored Russia for help.

Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov, no friend of the West, has sent his more moderate predecessor, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, to mediate a peace. Primakov would dearly love a negotiated settlement dividing NATO and leaving Serbia in control of Kosovo, and it would seem that the deal outlined in Bonn last week has given him much of what he wants. Clinton will no doubt hail the new agreement as bringing peace in our time to the Balkans. But, as ever, the devil is in the details. Although Kosovo regains some sort of autonomy, while Serbia retains overall sovereignty, what this will mean in practice, when the society is smashed and its people scattered to the winds, is hard to guess. The Kosovars’ armed force, the Kosovo Liberation Army, will be disarmed as part of the agreement, whereas the Yugoslav Army, though slated to be withdrawn from the province, will retain its powers and remain as a constant threat just across the borders from a disarmed Kosovo populace. The allies have agreed to U.N. “security forces,” rather than to a strongly armed, purely NATO force, will police the province. The inclusion of Russian troops in that force will guarantee the Serbians a great deal of leeway.

Furthermore, although the agreement stipulates that ethnic Albanians must be allowed to return to their homes, it is worth recalling that, four years after the Dayton agreement promised the same thing to Bosnian Muslims, they remain in exile. Finally, Milosevic and his cronies, who have, with some justice, been compared to the Nazis for their killing of unarmed civilians, are once again partners in an agreement with the Western democracies, left in power without having to face investigation or punishment for war crimes.

Although the Bonn agreement, if it stands as outlined, will certainly be spun by the White House as a great allied victory, in fact, it is a giant retreat. Belgrade has faced down the most powerful military alliance in the world and has survived. Russia has taken a weak diplomatic hand and parlayed it into a central role in settling the Kosovo conflict. NATO has already paid a huge diplomatic price to end its muddled war against Serbia; it will be interesting to see what it will now pay in cash. Russia watchers should not be at all surprised if, in the near future, international lending agencies suddenly rediscover their zeal for extending loans to Russia and for rescheduling Moscow’s vast debts.*