Kosovo’s president has accused Vladimir Putin of trying to commit genocide in Ukraine.
In an exclusive interview with HuffPost UK, Vjosa Osmani said the Russian president’s statements about “de-Nazifying” his neighbour showed an intention “to destroy in whole or in part the people of Ukraine”.
Osmani, a former professor of international law who became president last April, said the conflict had brought back “personal memories” of the Kosovo war in the 1990s, in which more than 13,000 people are thought to have been killed and up to 1.5million Albanian Kosovars displaced at the hands of the nationalist Yugoslav and Serb forces.
“It is absolutely devastating for all the people of Kosovo to see these images which, for us, they bring back quite a lot of personal memories,” she said.
“What we see in Ukraine is very similar — women being raped, civilians being killed, little children as well being killed, people forced to leave their homes — it’s absolutely painful.
“It’s been 20-something years, so for us the memories are very, very fresh.”
The president said she believed Ukraine was now also the victim of a similar “brutal genocidal regime” to the one that targeted Kosovo in the late 1990s and which forced Nato to launch a bombing campaign after diplomatic efforts to restore peace failed.
“As a former professor of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, we know war crimes when we see it,” Osmani said.
“The intention here is clear and the intention is the main elements of genocide.
“I believe that there is already a lot of evidence which international courts would use against Putin and against the Russian government for the crimes they are committing against Ukraine.
“I am confident that these crimes will not go unpunished. Unfortunately, in the case of former Yugoslavia, they have gone unpunished.
“The wounds are still absolutely open.”
Osmani said it was “encouraging to see” the unified response of the West in condemning Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but said there was “more to be done, both in terms of economic sanctions and especially when it comes to having an open door policy for Ukrainian refugees”.
She said that despite limited capacity, Kosovo had been keeping “our doors and hearts open” for refugees from Ukraine.
“We have been through that, we have been refugees ourselves, and we understand how important it was to save our lives that countries around the world kept their doors open for us.”
‘We went through hell’
Osmani, 39, is a Kosovar Albanian whose family was forced to flee from their homeland during the war in 1999.
The conflict broke out after Serbia launched a brutal crackdown on separatist movements within Kosovo, which was then controlled by Belgrade.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 but the latter still does not recognise it as a state, and nor does Moscow, and tensions remain high more than 20 years after the war ended.
In 1999, Slobodan Milošević, the former president of Serbia — then part of Yugoslavia — became the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes after a UN tribunal accused him of atrocities in Kosovo.
In an interview with the Times last year, Osmani recalled the moment a Serbian soldier shoved an AK-47 into her mouth before forcing her and her family to abandon their home in northern Kosovo when she was just 16.
“We grew up in a country where our right to education was denied, because during the early 1990s, we lived in an apartheid-like regime where all of the basic human rights was denied to Kosovar Albanians,” she told HuffPost UK.
“All other civil and political rights people were indiscriminately arrested, and our parents were political prisoners and we had to go through hell.
“So obviously, that absolutely shapes you to understand the importance of freedom and independence and peace, but also the very heavy price that we had to pay to achieve this.”
Osmani also heaped praise on Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him an “example for everyone around the world”.
“The people of Kosovo took up arms to defend themselves, to defend our freedom and to ultimately achieve the independence and the freedom that we enjoy today,” she said.
“So we very much understand the people of Ukraine and the fact that they would never give up under any circumstances.
“All of our sympathy and support goes out to them.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is now in its 13th day, has exacerbated Osmani’s fears of aggressive actions against Kosovo by Serbia, supported by its long-time ally, Russia.
Already there are signs that Russia is working to “destabilise” the Balkans with the help of its “proxy and satellite” Serbia, Osmani said, citing an increase in joint military exercises and a willingness to send Russian weaponry to the border in a recent dispute over car registration plates.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has been using recent press conferences to accuse Kosovars of going to fight in the Donbas, which the republic says is not true.
“The only country in Europe where there are pro-Putin protests is Serbia,” Osmani said.
“The only country in our part of the world and Europe, apart from the Lukashenko regime [in Belarus] that has not decided on sanctions against Russia, is Serbia.
“The fact that he [Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić] has disagreed to issue sanctions against Russia shows that he clearly stands with Russia on this one.
“And while in the 1990s Slobodan Milošević really committed crimes to the extent that he was rightly called the butcher of the Balkans, what Putin is right now is the butcher of democracy.”