In 1999, NATO attacked Yugoslavia, claiming that it was preventing a humanitarian disaster in Kosovo. By doing so, he violated international law. Russia refers to it to justify its aggression against Ukraine. However, this is completely wrong. After several months of negotiations, which bore no fruit, on March 24, 1999, NATO intervened in the civil war between the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian security forces on the one hand and the KLA paramilitary units on the other.
The NATO countries wanted to force Slobodan Milošević, the president of FR Yugoslavia, to stop the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and prevent a humanitarian disaster there.
However, NATO did not have a UN mandate for those military strikes, in which many civilians were killed.
The NATO countries, under the leadership of the US president, William Bill Clinton, quickly - gave themselves a mandate - pointing to a "humanitarian intervention" that is necessary to prevent worse things and to implement the UN resolutions that Yugoslavia did not implement.
However, after 25 years, most jurists who deal with international law believe that such a NATO military mission was not covered by international law.
Prevailing opinion - NATO bombing was a violation of international law
"If you ask the prevailing opinion, then it was a violation of international law. It was said in advance that military measures against Serbia will be undertaken only with the approval of the Security Council. Other justifications cannot be taken into account, in any case, not according to the prevailing opinion," says Wolf Heinchel von Heinig, professor of international law at the European University of Viadrina in Frankfurt am Oder, in an interview with DW.
The reasons given by Western politicians for the NATO attack ranged from the protection of the population in Kosovo, to the stabilization of the situation in the war-torn Western Balkans, to the blockades of Russia and China in the UN Security Council.
And the then German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jozef Joška Fischer, spoke about an intervention that is morally necessary to prevent massacres like those in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
"All that is nice, but international law is not created by a small group and it is not customary law. For that we need a huge majority of states. And we simply don't have it," says international law expert Wolf Heinchel von Heinig.
Russia's absurd arguments for the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine
The NATO attacks on Yugoslavia, which ended only on June 10, 1999, when Slobodan Milošević relented - in a way, it was an original sin, a great fall of international law.
"We heard the arguments of the eight NATO countries that were involved in it again when it came to the annexation of Crimea," says Wolff Heinchel von Heinig, describing the consequences of that procedure 25 years ago.
Because, during the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia invoked an alleged precedent to protect the population of Crimea from alleged threats. The same pattern was repeated after the attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that the people of eastern Ukraine had asked for help and invoked the UN Charter as justification for a "special military operation."
International law expert Wolf Heinzel von Heinig says about these arguments:
"Even if the humanitarian intervention is recognized, the Russian arguments are of course absurd. There can be no question that the conditions that prevailed in Kosovo at that time - I only mention the infamous ethnic cleansing - prevailed in Crimea, nor in the south-east of Ukraine".
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Account for Kosovo
Therefore, the situation in the Western Balkans 25 years ago cannot be compared with Ukraine today. Russia's invasion and war against Ukraine remains illegal under international law.
"This is the account for Kosovo: we are now faced with the same arguments that we presented then, although the facts are, of course, fundamentally different," said Heinchel von Heinig of the European University in Frankfurt am Oder.
The legal confrontation with the NATO operation against Yugoslavia - did not succeed - neither before the UN tribunal for Yugoslavia, nor before international courts.
In the current case of the war in Ukraine, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ordered back in March 2022 that Russia must cease all combat operations in Ukraine. However, Russia ignores it. The main process, which deals with the Genocide Convention, is ongoing.
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