A rules-based world - on the threshold of the conference in Switzerland

At the conference scheduled for this month in Switzerland, Zelenskyy - in my opinion - will mainly say the same things that he spoke about at the conference in Munich this year (see the official website of the President of Ukraine):
“We must follow rules in international politics, but Russia...”
Zelenskyy used the word “rules” 14 times in the aforementioned speech alone!

However, Zelenskyy chose not to go into specific details regarding what these rules are; he mentioned only the UN Charter.

Most documents, which define rules binding on national governments, refer to, among other things, “non-interference in internal affairs of other states” and “prohibition of illegal changes of borders.”
But were these rules in effect at the time of coup d'etat in Ukraine in 2014?

To answer this question, I propose to recall the situation that developed by the end of the 1990s in Yugoslavia, and specifically, in its autonomous region of Kosovo, where a significant number of ethnic Albanians live.

Kosovo separatists in the 1990s declared their desire to create their own state and began to fight by force of arms for separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia. At that time, Hashim Thaçi, the future “President of Kosovo,” constantly told Western politicians - for example, in Rambouillet where he headed the Albanian delegation - about sufferings of Albanian civilians in Yugoslavia.

Therefore, heads of Western states decided that “non-interference in internal affairs of other states” and “prohibition of illegal changes of borders” are, of course, good, but the Western states had to start bombing Yugoslavia in order to force its government to withdraw its police and army from Kosovo.

And in 2008, when Kosovo Albanians declared their independence, the US, UK and their NATO allies immediately recognized Kosovo's independence.

Moreover, it should be noted that Hashim Thaçi, who previously so picturesquely told Western politicians about the sufferings of ethnic Albanians, is currently being tried by the 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, see here.

Now, we move back to the Ukrainian crisis. It is obvious that during the Euromaidan, Western politicians openly violated the principle of non-interference in internal affairs of Ukraine. For example, in December 2013, V. Nuland, a US Assistant Secretary of State, and G. Pyatt, the US Ambassador to Ukraine, gave food to people who had illegally set up tents in the central square of the Ukrainian capital; see here.

And after Russia had taken actions in 2014 to protect ethnic Russians in the Crimea, these actions caused sharp criticism from the countries that had previously been so concerned about Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. These countries began to supply weapons to the Kyiv government, which openly threatened with military measures for “reintegration of Crimea,” and that - in my opinion - provoked the start of the Special Military Operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine.

Currently, the situation is such that Western politicians remember certain rules when it is advantageous to the West, and when it is disadvantageous, these rules are discarded.

But if we want a rules-based world, the rules must be respected by everyone and always.
There cannot be rules that are now observed, later not observed, after that observed again, etc.