For nearly two decades, President Vladimir Putin has been on a mission to make Russia great again – to borrow a phrase from his American counterpart – and to right what he sees as the greatest “wrong” in the country’s recent history: the collapse of the USSR and the loss of its superpower status. In this grand geopolitical quest, tiny Kosovo has also played a special role. Putin sees NATO’s military intervention in 1999 and the 2008 unilateral declaration of independence as a direct affront to Russian power in its traditional sphere of influence in the Balkans. This view is also broadly held in Serbia, which considers Kosovo to be historically Serbian territory. In recent years, as the United States and the European Union increasingly appear to have failed to bring a lasting solution to the Serbia-Kosovo dispute, Russia has moved from being an outright supporter of Belgrade to trying to assume the role of a mediator.
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/kosovo-quandary-win-russia-181118131429535.html?fbclid=IwAR3SZHCAXlzRoB6ZJ47HnDqPyaDqh-c-2YENMytiXuZvTzf1dmtBuy7bkrk
