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A couple months after launching Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin tried to justify his war by pointing to the Western Balkans. In a meeting with United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, Putin pointed to the legacy of the NATO intervention in the former Yugoslavia in 1999, a bombing campaign that hit targets across what was then combined Serbia and Montenegro in a bid to halt Serbia’s onslaught against ethnic Kosovar Albanians fighting for autonomy. The brief war and subsequent peacekeeping operation led to the emergence of the independent nation of Kosovo.
