Serbians could only forget the aggression unleashed by the U.S.-led NATO in 1999 if their country ceases to exist, President Aleksandar Vucic warned on Friday. He was marking the 24th anniversary of the military bloc’s bombing campaign of the then Yugoslavia.
Media reports said:
Vucic added that the U.S. and its allies have yet to answer for their attacks, which were conducted in violation of international law.
His speech comes at a time when Belgrade is being pressured by Western countries over its ties with Russia.
Speaking at a ceremony in the northern city of Sombor to commemorate the victims of the deadly airstrikes that claimed thousands of Serbian lives, Vucic said that NATO’s aggression marked the moment when “modern international law finally died.”
“24 years have passed. You tore away parts of our territory. You killed 79 children, 2500 people and not only civilians, but also soldiers and police,” the Serbian president asserted. “Who are you to kill our soldiers and police and who are on their territory and in their country? Where did you get the right to kill our soldiers and our police? Who gave you that right?”
Vucic recalled that the U.S.-led military bloc attacked a free and sovereign country while justifying the move by saying it had to stop “genocide.”
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s aggression against Yugoslavia 24 years ago marked the death of international law, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Friday at a commemoration event in the city of Sombor, where the first bomb fell in 1999.
“24 years ago, the modern international law finally died, and you should know that it is not an unimportant bureaucratic wording — but much more than that,” Vucic said.
“Nothing worse could happen in the world than what was done here, to a small country, which was guilty only of seeking to make its own decisions, and to be free. As such it didn’t appeal to those powers which destroyed the old international order in 1989/90 and created a new one in which only they have the final say in everything,” Vucic said.
He was addressing a large crowd of people who gathered at the St. George Square in Sombor, waving Serbian flags and lighting candles for the victims of the bombings, which most of them see as an act of injustice.
Bombings of Yugoslavia started on March 24, 1999, without the previous authorization of the United Nations (UN) Security Council.
During the 78-day bombings of both civilian and military targets, Serbia lost thousands of policemen, soldiers and civilians, and suffered immense material damage to its transport and energy infrastructure.
Among NATO’s targets were houses and apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, and even kindergartens, while the weapons deployed included missiles containing depleted uranium and cluster bombs.
The Chinese embassy, where three journalists lost their lives, and the building of the Serbian national broadcaster RTS, were also among the targets.
Vucic also commented on the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, calling Western support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine “hypocritical and two-faced” — because it is based on the UN Charter, which he believes was broken in 1999.
Belgrade was engaged in a civil war with ethnic Albanian separatists at the time, following other post-Yugoslavia conflicts in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia.
He also recalled that NATO failed to obtain permission from the UN Security Council to start the military intervention, but went ahead with it anyway.
According to the Serbian leader, NATO “carried out the aggression” for two reasons. Firstly, it wanted to show that “we are the strongest and we can do everything,” and secondly, “to take Kosovo and Metohija” away from Serbia, he said.
Vucic went on to say that Serbia’s duty is “to try to forgive,” but that it can forget everything only if it ceases to exist.
Source: countercurrents