When the spokesperson of Russia's Foreign Ministry says that Russia has no enemy in Ukraine - but "in a nationalist minority group that has grabbed power in Kyiv" - that isn't diplomacy. That's rhetoric, and rhetoric of the wartime kind, designed for an audience that looks at the Kremlin as home.

The statement by Maria Zakharova comes at a moment when Moscow accuses Kyiv of breaking a one-day ceasefire from 8 to 10 May, which Russia declared in honour of Victory Day. According to Zakharova, in those three days 25 Russian civilians were killed, including one child, in Ukrainian attacks.

The main message is different. "The main enemy of Ukrainians is not Russia or Russians, but a nationalist minority group that has taken power in Kyiv," Zakharova said. When the Kremlin talks like that, it's a message to the Russian public that the war isn't against a people - it's against a political elite. It's the same argument that, when carried by Balkan dictators in the 1990s, ended where we know it ended.

Zakharova went further. According to her, the Kyiv regime has turned Ukraine into a "Western puppet state", pushing it toward corruption and neo-Nazism. She dismissed accusations about children allegedly removed from Ukraine as "anti-Russian propaganda". It's the same package of justifications: minority, corruption, external factor, neo-Nazism. It's meant to look like analysis - in essence, it's a script for an audience that doesn't want to see.

For Balkan readers, the short version is clear. "We're not at war with the people, just with a group of extremists" - that's the sentence every Balkan war leader said before sending their tanks into the neighbouring country. How often did we hear the same sentence from Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, and yes - from Skopje? And how often did it turn out to be true?