The U.S. attitude to Yugoslavia and to Ukraine

The subject of this article is the U.S. attitude to two different Slavic countries, to Yugoslavia and to Ukraine.

At first, I would like to remind about the situation in Yugoslavia at the end of the 1990s.

At that period, ethnic Albanians, who are majority in the Yugoslav region Kosovo, began to fight for secession of Kosovo from Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav authorities, of course, always claim that this separatist movement was supported by foreign countries, e.g. by Turkey and other Islamic countries. The Yugoslav authorities also claim that there were many foreigners – even black people - among separatists and that the regular army of the neighboring Republic of Albania took part in hostilities on the Yugoslav territory.

And the U.S. government too, decided to support Kosovo separatists, at first by diplomatic means and then by a military operation which forced the Yugoslav army and police to leave Kosovo in 1999.

On February 17, 2008, the Kosovo Parliament declared the full independence of Kosovo and on the next day the U.S. recognized Kosovo as independent.

And it should be mentioned that Hashim Thaci, one of the leaders of the Kosovo separatist movement, who later became the President of Kosovo, is now on trial by a Special Court in the Hague where he and three other leaders of Kosovo separatists are accused of war crimes, crimes-against-humanity, killings and tortures during and after the 1998-1999 conflict against then-Yugoslavia.

By the way, back in 2010, a Council of Europe report had stated that Hashim Thaci had links to an Albanian group involved in smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs; please see the website of Voice of America.

But during the “freedom fight” in Kosovo in the 1990s no Western media had reported about such facts.

Now about situation in Ukraine.

In November 2013, a protest movement – the so-called Euromaidan – began in this country and at some point, protesters started to burn and kill although such their actions absolutely could not be called a self-defense; please see the article “Was there a threat for ethnic Russians in February 2014 in Ukraine (Crimean question)?”.

Therefore, the Russian Government had concerns about future of ethnic Russians, who are the majority in the Crimea, and in March 2014 the Crimea was accepted into the Russian Federation.

However, this time, the U.S. declared that the principle of territorial integrity had to be abided by.

But why had the U.S. not abided by this principle of territorial integrity six years earlier when they had recognized Kosovo?

In the spring 2014, after an unconstitutional removal of the President Yanukovych from power, protests began in the Eastern Ukraine, mainly in Donbas.  And new Ukrainian rulers, of course, claimed that these protests were instigated by Russia.

And the U.S. did not support the separatist movement in Ukraine – although they had supported the separatist movement in Yugoslavia at the end of the 1990s.

The difference between Western attitude to Yugoslavia and to Ukraine can be well showed by the following events in these two countries.

In March 1998, Yugoslav special forces surrounded in the village of Prekaz a compound of brothers Adem and Hamëz Jashari who fought with arms for secession of Kosovo from Yugoslavia.

You can find many pictures of these persons in Internet when they posed with automatic rifles, a machine-gun, etc.

And in March 1998, The Washington Post cited a statement of the Yugoslav authorities that before the attack on the Jashari’s compound the Yugoslav policemen had demanded that all persons come outside. Yugoslav police officials said that 30 people answered the call and came outside but Adem and Hamëz Jashari and other persons stayed in the compound and started to fire.  

The fight lasted for several days, and the number of killed persons varies in different sources. For example, in the book “Humanitarian law violations in Kosovo”, which has been published by Human Rights Watch, you can find on page 32 names of 42 Albanians, who had been killed in Prekaz in this compound; please see Google Books.  And by the way, the names of Igballe Rifat Jashari (item 9 and item 10) and Feride Jashari (item 6 and item 31) are repeated twice in this list

After these events in Prekaz, there was a huge outcry in the U.S. and Western Europe; please see the citation below.

In late March (1998) coordinated demonstrations in Europe’s capitals and eight U.S. cities brought more than one hundred thousand people onto the streets.  

please see Google Books

But when exactly the same number of persons, i.e. 42 died in a fire in the Odessa Trade Unions House at the beginning of May 2014 during clashes with Ukrainian nationalists (please see here), there was absolutely no public outcry in the U.S. and Western Europe.

And American and Western European politicians, too, were absolutely indifferent to the death of 42 people.

But why did the U.S. not bomb Kiev after this mass death?

I personally cannot even remember that a U.S. President or a German Chancellor ever demanded from any Ukrainian officials to investigate deaths of these people. Therefore, Ukrainian authorities have not finished “investigation of this mass death so far.