BY
Russia vetoed a United Nations Security
Council resolution on Wednesday that would have condemned the 1995 Srebrenica
massacre as a genocide ahead of its 20th anniversary on July 11. Given that the
slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serbs has already been widely
condemned as a genocide, both by international
tribunals and countries
around the world, the diplomatic maneuver may seem inconsequential. But in the
context of Moscow’s foreign-policy goals for the Balkans, the move is
consistent with a long history of Russian engagement in the region.
For starters, Serbia is an important ally
that allows Moscow to maintain influence in the Balkans, which the Kremlin views
as an area of strategic and economic interest. Moscow and Belgrade have ties
dating back to the Russian Empire, and as Slavic, Orthodox Christian nations,
they share strong ethnic and cultural ties.
In recent years and under Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s leadership, the Kremlin has moved to have a more substantial
footprint in the Balkans to push back on what it sees as Western power —
embodied by the European Union and NATO — encroaching on its borders and
eroding its influence.
“Moscow wants to make it clear that the
Balkans won’t be part of mainstream of Europe,” Kurt Volker, a former U.S.
ambassador to NATO and the executive director of the McCain Institute, told Foreign Policy.
Putin has been actively courting Belgrade in recent years, decrying Kosovo’s
independence and serving as the guest of
honor as Serbia commemorated
Soviet troops liberating the country from Nazi occupation. Meanwhile, Gazprom,
the Russian energy giant, inked a deal
in 2013 to supply natural gas to Serbia. Military ties between the two
countries have also strengthened, with Russian paratroopers carrying out drills in
Serbia last year.
But the Kremlin’s main tool has been
appealing to strained Serb nationalism. During the debate at the Security
Council, Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said adopting the resolution
“would be counter-productive,” and cited fears of renewed ethnic violence, that
it “would lead to greater tension in the region,” a line echoed earlier by
Belgrade. Serbia, which does not have a seat on the council, asked Russia to
block the resolution according to
the AFP. After the resolution’s veto, Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic said
that it was a “great day” for his country. “Russia’s veto is all about winning
over the Serbian public and its leadership” Volker said. “Putin wants to
display an image of himself standing up for Russian identity around the world.
It’s great optics at home.”
During the 1992 to 1995 war in Bosnia that
followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, Serbia was ostracized for its role in the
brutal conflict. Srebrenica, a Muslim town besieged by Bosnian Serb forces with
support from Belgrade, came to embody the conflict’s violence. Serb troops led
by General Ratko Mladic — who has been on trial in The Hague on genocide
charges since 2012 — overran the enclave as they tried to wrest away territory
from Bosnian Muslims and Croats to form their own state. Thousands fled to the
mountains, but the rest of the population sought protection from Dutch U.N.
peacekeepers stationed at the suburb of Potocari. But the outnumbered and
ineffective peacekeepers could only watch as Serb troops occupied their base
and separated men and boys from women, and loaded the males on buses and
trucks. The Serb forces slaughtered some 8,000 men and boys. More than 7,000
bodies of victims have been found, but 1,000 are still missing.
Serbia has acknowledged that a “grave crime”
took place at Srebrenica and even adopted a declaration condemning the massacre
in 2010. As it has sought closer ties with the EU, it has also arrested high
profile military leaders involved in the massacre. But Serbian leaders have
also charged previous attempts to highlight the Srebrenica genocide to
undermine their nation’s reputation and impede reconciliation efforts in the
Balkans.
Srebrenica became the mobilizing event for
international intervention, opening the door to more militarily robust
peacekeeping missions from the U.N. and NATO. In August 1995, then-Russian
President Boris Yeltsin harshly criticized intensified NATO air strikes on
Bosnian Serb military targets. But an economically weakened post-Soviet Russia
was also careful to not burn bridges with the West and even agreed to provide
troops to the NATO-sponsored peacekeeping force.
Under Putin, and especially since the Ukraine
crisis one year ago, Russia has aimed to roll back Western influence in the
Balkans, according to Richard Kauzlarich, a former U.S. ambassador to
Bosnia-Herzegovina and a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Moscow
believes the current order in the Balkans was formed at a time when Russia was
down and the West took advantage of that weakness.”
Given the extreme low that Russia’s relations
with the West have fallen to, denying recognition of Srebrenica as a genocide
is a small move in the wider standoff between Moscow and its adversaries in
Brussels and Washington. Apart from driving a wedge between Serbia’s
pro-European and nationalist camps, the rhetoric is also a boost for
nationalists in the Republic of Srpska, the self-governing Bosnian Serb entity
in Bosnia-Herzegovina. “As long as Bosnia-Herzegovina remains divided and
dysfunctional, Western institutions will not be able to continue advancing
within the Balkans,” said Kauzlarich.
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