Word: kosovo
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that Medvedev stated: "There will no longer be any free gas for anyone." If and when he becomes Russian President, Medvedev will shake hands warmly with President Bush. It would be ill-advised for Washington, however, to believe Russia's perceptions of its foreign-policy interests will change regarding Kosovo, Iran or the U.S.-proposed "nuclear shield" installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Even in internal policy there is no serious disagreement between Medvedev and Putin...
...Shutting down the power would be easier to enforce, but apart from ethnic Albanians, it would also hit tens of thousands of Kosovo Serbs who live south of the ethnic divide. Also, Serbia's economy depends heavily on natural gas that flows through Hungary, thus making it vulnerable to retaliation measures from the European Union...
...Serbia's ultimate threat is that the secession of Kosovo would topple moderate nationalists in the government and replace them with ultra-nationalists from the Serbian Radical Party, thus ending democracy in Serbia and turning it, again, into a rogue state. Western endorsement of Kosovo's independence, Serbian officials say, would turn a vast majority of Serbs against the U.S. and the E.U. and bring it closer to Russia, the only major power that backs Serbia over Kosovo...
...that the majority of Serbs do not share the government's views. Although recent opinion polls do show a slight increase in anti-Western sentiments, more than half of the electorate strongly supports Serbia's prospective membership in the E.U., even if the price of that means losing Kosovo...
...Serbia's options for retaliation remain limited, as the government may soon discover that fulfilling their threats would damage their own country rather than the intended targets. Belgrade will almost certainly not recognize independent Kosovo any time soon, but it will have to find some way to live with...