In an interview today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov linked the ongoing violence in Tibet to the dreaded "Kosovo precedent":

There are grounds to presume that this is not occurring by chance [...] You can see what is happening in China's autonomous region of Tibet, how the separatists there are acting. The Albanians in Macedonia are already demanding a level of autonomy that is a clear step toward independence. Furthermore, events in other areas of the world give us grounds to assume that we are only at the beginning of a very precarious process."

It seems like the sinister implication of Kosovo for the future of the nation-state is fast becoming one of the Russian government's favorite rhetorical devices. Except for when it isn't of course.

(Hat tip: Robert Amsterdam)