Kosovo 1999

Clipper747

Banned
All hell breaks loose when the Western public opinion is so hyped up in this Serbophobia that it's going to make Hitler's invasion of Yugoslavia seem like a walk in the park. Literally as the Wehrmacht had to do was to blitz into Belgrade and Yugoslavia is finished. Serbs being more defiant, let's say a change in the Russian government is needed. (Yeltsin may not be useful with the situation in Yugoslavia. Someone who is a hard liner would be perfect for the job, like either Zyuganov, Primakov or Zhirinovsky. Putin isn't the star at this point yet.)


If Putin had been in office for several months to a year I can only imagine what he may have done to deter airstrikes.
 
If Putin had been in office for several months to a year I can only imagine what he may have done to deter airstrikes.

True..he wouldn't have been the pushover that the alcoholic Yeltsin was... I'm also pretty confident that a Putin in charge of Russia could've made NATO quickly forget about its desire to try out its weapons...
 
You do know about the Russian airbridge plan was the prime reason their paratroopers marched there from Bosnia, taking Nato completely by surprise?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/671495.stm

The plan in a nutshell: Flow in thousands of paratroopers while Nato marches in through ground routes, and send them to northern Kosovo as non-Nato peacekeepers and part of the KFOR to prepare ground for future partition of the province. The Nato paratroopers foiled this, while Romania and Bulgaria closed their airspaces in exchange (alledgedly) of a hastened Nato-membership and US quarantees.
 
I wonder what would the repercussions of Clark's fatal mistake when he does order the attack on the Russian soldiers who occupied Pristina Airport. Would it lead straight to World War Three and the possible NATO invasion of not only Yugoslavia, but Russia and Belarus as well? Belarus for logistical reasons, and maybe Ukraine for securing NATO bases.
 
I wonder what would the repercussions of Clark's fatal mistake when he does order the attack on the Russian soldiers who occupied Pristina Airport. Would it lead straight to World War Three and the possible NATO invasion of not only Yugoslavia, but Russia and Belarus as well? Belarus for logistical reasons, and maybe Ukraine for securing NATO bases.

I can't imagine the situation escalating that drastically unless Russia was being run by Zhirinovsky. Let's not forget that there are still nuclear weapons around.

Let's say things did turn out differently on the ground in Pristina. James Blunt goes into music early rather than joining the military (I always found it hilarious that the crisis was averted by the guy who sang "You're Beautiful") and the British ground commander there doesn't call his supervisor but just blindly follows Clark's orders and storms the airport.

International crisis, jets scrambled and missiles on alert - sure. But Clinton will make it absolutely clear that this was an accident and NATO will fire Clark as fast as possible. Nobody wants World War III, especially when there's no real ideological conflict between the West and Russia anymore.

If you have an earlier PoD that results in Zhirinovsky leading Russia, though, you might get some interesting results.
 
I can think of the Constitutional Crisis of 1993 where Zhirinovsky becomes the dominant leader of Russia instead of Zyuganov. Although would the clown still screw up the Russian economy during its roller coaster like recession? Another Zhirinovsky PoD would be that an early death for Boris Yeltsin (alcohol was always his thing), and Zhirinovsky becoming the Yeltsin-analogue, although it wouldn't end well if Russia suffers more under Zhirinovsky.

Although I'm still thinking about the Pristina Airport incident with a Russia led by Zyuganov, and I was wondering if the results would be the same as it were in OTL when Yeltsin was around.
 
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