Russian Foreign Policy: Interests, Vectors, and Sectors by Gvosdev Nikolas K. & Marsh Christopher

Author:Gvosdev, Nikolas K. & Marsh, Christopher
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781483322087
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2013-08-21T16:00:00+00:00

RUSSIAN IMPOTENCE IN THE BALKANS

Unlike Poland and the Baltics, which at certain points in their history had been part of the Russian empire, Moscow’s grip on the Balkans had always been tenuous at best. It was not an area that Russia was going to give up easily, however, especially as it seemed that the West was quickly moving in. The Yeltsin administration tried to preserve some degree of influence in the Balkans, particularly through its support of Serbia during the Yugoslav wars of succession. Initially, Russia was not particularly involved in determining the fate of Yugoslavia. Gorbachev tended to support Western efforts to find a solution to head off the impending violence; in July 1991, Gorbachev joined with U.S. President George H. W. Bush at the Moscow summit in issuing a joint statement condemning the violence. Some of the hardline elements within the Soviet government, however, were more eager to back the federal Yugoslav government’s efforts to crush secession, seeing Yugoslavia’s disintegration as a harbinger of what might happen in the USSR. In August 1991, Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov even agreed to send weapons to Yugoslavia. However, these plans were nullified in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt. In turn, when the Soviet Union itself collapsed, the Serbs did not find the successor Russian government in Moscow to be overly sympathetic, in part because Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia, had supported the hardliners. Thus, given the marked Atlanticist tendencies of the first Yeltsin administration, it was not surprising that, after the Europeans had decided to recognize the independence of Slovenia and Croatia from Yugoslavia, Yeltsin followed suit in February 1992. Yeltsin also initially accepted the assessment that Milosevic, by supporting Serbian separatists in Bosnia and Croatia, was the main person responsible for the violence.86 The Russian government supported United Nations Security Council Resolution 743, passed that same month, which authorized the deployment of a peacekeeping force to stop the fighting in Croatia and to pave the way for a political settlement. In addition, Russia agreed to dispatch Russian airborne units to take part in this peace-enforcement mission (UNPROFOR). As the Yeltsin administration had concluded, “Russian involvement was seen as necessary to enhance its standing as a major power committed to the establishment of peace and stability in post–Cold War Europe.”87 Participation in UNPROFOR seemed to validate the Atlanticist assumption that a close and productive partnership could develop between the West and post–Soviet Russia on European security issues. Russia also agreed in May 1992 to the imposition of economic sanctions against Yugoslavia88 after the fighting began in Bosnia between that republic’s Serb, Croat, and Muslim populations and supported the creation of a no-fly zone over Bosnia in October.

The Russians had hoped that they would play a substantive role in mapping out the parameters of a post–Yugoslav settlement but instead increasingly complained that they were being tasked to execute policies largely devised in Washington and other Western capitals. This divergence widened because Moscow began to see all parties in

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