United Nations-mediated talks on the future of Kosovo present Russia with a potential opportunity to radically alter the geopolitical balance in the Caucasus. If the former Yugoslav province gains independence, Russian leaders have indicated that they might try to use the development as a precedent to secure the separation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia. *** The United States and the European Union both argue that the Kosovo question revolves around unique circumstances, and thus the determination of its status would not set any international precedent. Moscow is dismissive of such an argument. "Double standards and selectiveness in conflicts is unacceptable," Lavrov said in his Pravda interview.

According to the Russian press reports, the Kosovo scenario has become a popular concept in South Ossetia. Most South Ossetians claim that their national goal is two-fold: to secede from Georgia and reunite with their Ossetian brethren across the border in the Russian Federation. South and North Ossetians, they argue, constitute essentially one people artificially divided by the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. To deny them the right to reunification – while such right has been granted, for example, to the Germans – would constitute a double standard.

Of course, there is this:

While the Kosovo-precedent concept is currently fashionable among policy makers in Moscow, a number of Russian commentators have questioned the soundness of such a strategy. Given that Russia itself is a patchwork of ethnic territories, especially in the volatile North Caucasus, the precedent has the ability to come back and haunt Moscow. While conditions are relatively calm at the moment outside of Chechnya and Dagestan, they add, it was only just over a decade ago that many of Russia’s minority groups were clamoring for sovereignty -- not just in the North Caucasus, but also in regions such as Tatarstan and Yakutia.

It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Russia could face the uncomfortable prospect of Chechnya and other Russian regions dominated by one or two ethnic groups in the North Caucasus seeking independence through referendums. "A ‘genie of recognition’ let out by the United States and EU could cause a domino effect across the entire post-Soviet space," cautioned a commentary published in the Rossiiskiye Vesti weekly.

One more way to a bigger war...