Serbia's main ally Russia has recognized the self-declared independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia.

VOA: special.2010.07.24

Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia last year, despite strong opposition from Belgrade and from Moscow.

VOA: standard.2009.06.11

Abkhazia and South Ossetia declared independence following Georgia's conflict with Russia last August.

VOA: standard.2009.04.30

His radicalism scared criollo landholders, and Mexico declared independence only in 1821, in conservative reaction to a liberal Spanish government.

ECONOMIST: Millennium issue: Freeing Spanish America

South Sudan took with it nearly three-quarters of Sudan's oil production when it declared independence and the two sides fell out over how much the South should pay to export its oil through Sudanese pipelines.

BBC: President Bashir orders South Sudan border to be opened

Adelina Marku, who speaks for the Tetovo-based Democratic Party of Albanians, a junior partner in Macedonia's ruling coalition government, says that the Kosovars, who declared nominal independence from Serbia back in 1991 and created a series of notional organs of state, had lulled themselves into a false sense of security.

ECONOMIST: Macedonia and its Kosovars