US Realpolitik Revealing Another Double Standard?

So John McCain was on CBS's Face the Nation this weekend, and he said this about Russia and the Ukraine

What does Putin do here? I think the message has to be sent to him to let the Ukrainian people determine their own future. And a partition of Ukraine is totally unacceptable.

Really?

So a partition was totally acceptable in Serbia/Kosovo, but not in Ukraine? Serbia was punished for intervening to protect their own minority (note the date of the article). And we don't think the Russians would be justified in protecting their ethnic minority?

He continued

The people of Russia are have watched this transpire and they're tired of the crony capitalism and kleptocracy that governs Russia today.

So we put a rebranded organization of drug runners and human traffickers (the KLA) in charge of a neo-country we stole from another sovereign nation, effectively creating - and then protecting! - a kleptocracy in the Balkans. And then we tacitly opposed the Russians for trying to clean out the gangster state on their own doorstep as the criminal gangs in Chechnya decided to call themselves "freedom fighters" because some of them happened to be Muslims.

We've given the Russians all the political pretext they need to effect a partition of the Ukraine. The question is whether or not we've recognized it. And how long before it bites us in the ass closer to home.