Duma official says Russia won’t recognize Kosovo

NEWS 15.06.202211:14
Sputnik/Alexander Astafyev/Pool via REUTERS

A senior Russian State Duma official said on Wednesday that Moscow “has not and will not recognize the independence of Kosovo”.

State Duma deputy Chairman Petr Tolstoy told Belgrade pro-government daily Politika that the forcible separation of part of a state is unacceptable unless the people initiated it and it was not confirmed by referendum “as was the case when Crimea was reunited with Russia”. “The Serbs in Kosovo today have been wrenched from their homeland. The events of 1999 caused deep sadness not only among the Serbian people but, believe me, among the Russians,” he said.

“Going back to the words of (Russian President) Vladimir Putin who compared the recognition of the independence of the DNR and LNR (two self-proclaimed republics in the Donbas region of Ukraine) with the legal precedent on Kosovo and we see that was said to show the double standards and hypocrisy of the West,” he said.
According to Tolstoy, the war in Ukraine is “clearly a battle by the collective West against Russia at the expense of the Ukrainians … and is not a local conflict but a clash of two different civilizations, different ideologies”.