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Twenty-five years ago, NATO started bombing Yugoslavia
On March 24, 1999, Western countries launched a series of devastating airstrikes on Belgrade, the capital of the sovereign nation of Yugoslavia, which had been already suffering from a political crisis. The US and its allies declared that the Noble Anvil military op was motivated by “humanitarian” reasons and targeted only the military – but in reality, NATO airstrikes killed at least 2,500 people, ruined national infrastructure and sped up the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
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Sergey Lavrov at the UNSC
Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations Sergey Lavrov’s address to the President of the Security Council (March 24, 1999)
The Russian Federation is profoundly outraged at the use by the NATO of military force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Those who are involved in this unilateral use of force against the sovereign Federal Republic of Yugoslavia — carried out in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and without the authorization of the Security Council — must realize the heavy responsibility they bear for subverting the Charter and other norms of international law and for attempting to establish in the world, de facto, the primacy of force and unilateral diktat.
The members of NATO are not entitled to decide the fate of other sovereign and independent States. They must not forget that they are not only members of their alliance, but also Members of the United Nations.
Attempts to justify the NATO strikes with arguments about preventing a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo are completely untenable.
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Attempts to apply a different standard to international law and to disregard its basic norms and principles create a dangerous precedent that could cause acute destabilization and chaos on the regional and global level.
The fact that NATO has opted to use force in Kosovo raises very serious questions about the sincerity of the repeated assurances that that alliance was not claiming the role of the world’s policeman and was prepared to cooperate in the interests of common European security.
The Russian Federation vehemently demands the immediate cessation of this illegal military action against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Nuremberg and the Crime of Wars of Aggression
“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
Primakov’s ‘U-Turn over Atlantic’
How Russian PM Primakov showed Moscow won’t be US satellite
On March 24, 1999, Yevgeny Primakov’s plane was en route to the US where the then-Russian prime minister was due to discuss an IMF loan to the tune of $5 billion for his country. But after then-US Vice President Al Gore told Primakov about NATO starting to bomb Yugoslavia, he decided to turn his plane around and go back to Moscow.
Despite Gore’s desperate attempts to persuade Primakov to backtrack on his decision and come to Washington, the Russian prime minister was undeterred.
“If I had accepted Gore’s terms, I would have been a real traitor,” Primakov later said.
Dr. Samuel Hoff, a professor of history and political science at Delaware State University, points to the significant expansion of NATO after the March 1999 incident.
“It is a fact that in 1999, NATO had 16 countries. And as we sit here in 2024, there are 32 members,” Hoff notes in an interview with Sputnik.
Peter Kuznick, a professor of history at the American University, tells Sputnik that Primakov’s U-turn over the Atlantic added significantly to tarnishing the already “strained” US-Russian relations at the time.
Referring to current “terrible” ties between Moscow and Washington, “the lack of trust” and a bilateral “polarization,” the professor says that one is “beginning to see signs of that certainly with Primakov’s mission in 1999.”
“So it certainly can be seen as an important turning point in terms of the deterioration of potential friendship between the US and Russia and creating a much more positive kind of multipolar world,” he concludes.
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NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia: A ‘culmination of negligence’ that opened Pandora’s box
Twenty-five years ago, NATO kicked off its 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. According to various sources, up to 2,500 people were killed and over 6,000 more injured during the bombing, which was not approved by the UN.
In an interview with Sputnik, Dr. Stevan Gajic, a Balkans expert and research associate at the Belgrade-based Institute of European Studies, says that the beginning of NATO’s “illegal attack” against Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999, was “a precedent that opened Pandora’s box.”
“It was a culmination of negligence of the international law that started since the end of the Cold War. Absolutely, [the] 1999 [NATO campaign] was a precedent. We can even say that the international law was in a way abolished at that moment and, of course, after that chaos was introduced into the system of international relations,” Gacic points out.
The expert also didn’t rule out launching a “real investigation against NATO crimes” in Yugoslavia, which he says can only happen after the serious geopolitical changes following the collapse of NATO in one way or the other. He was echoed by Dr. Srdjan Sljukic, a professor of sociology at the University of Novi Sad, Serbia, who tells Sputnik that “NATO aggression against Yugoslavia” reflected “two sorts of crimes,” such as “breaking the international law” and “bombing civilian objects and killing many civilians.”
Sljukic also warns that “as long as the key Western countries are ruled by the current liberal elites, NATO countries will not be put on fair trial because of their crimes in Yugoslavia and all over the world.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry Statement in connection with the 25th anniversary of NATO aggression against Yugoslavia
History knows many events which, by virtue of their profound impact on the international order, marked a change of eras.
The NATO attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999 is certainly one such event. It went beyond being a tragic milestone in the life of the Serbian people with thousands of ruined lives and desecrated national dignity, and included a devastating blow to international law and European security foundations that had been laid after World War II. The United States and the EU got finally convinced in their own impunity and moral superiority which was bad news for those who prefer to choose their own path rather than become someone’s tool in their efforts to realise their own interests. The strategic balance of power collapsed, and a drawn-out crisis of international relations ensued which continues to worsen.
The US and its allies who assaulted a peaceful European country trampled on the UN Charter and the CSCE/OSCE principles, and desecrated the very notion of sovereignty. They have thus made it clear that they will stoop to anything, including radioactive contamination of vast swathes of land, to achieve global dominance. The widespread use of depleted uranium munitions by NATO has led to a multifold increase in cancer cases in that region, contaminated the environment where millions of people had lived for many years, and went down in history as a separate dark chapter on the list of NATO crimes.
During the 78 days of military aggression 14,000 bombs were dropped on Yugoslavia and over 2,000 missiles were fired, including cluster and demolition shells. Under the mocking front of a “humanitarian intervention,” mostly civilian targets were hit, including residential districts, hospitals, schools, bridges, mass transit vehicles, and refugee convoys. Thousands of civilians were killed, including 89 children, whom the Western coalition cynically referred to as “collateral damage.” No one has ever been held accountable for these atrocities, and international justice turned a deaf ear to the suffering of the Serbs and let NATO atrocities go unnoticed.
Not only the bombed-out buildings of the Yugoslav General Staff and Defence Ministry in central Belgrade which irritate the US officials to this day remind us of those terrible days. Serbia has many other unhealed wounds. A portion of the country’s ancestral territory, Kosovo and Metohija, has been forcibly taken away. The West has taken under its wing terrorists from the Kosovo Liberation Army, gave the province the status of a pseudo-state, and encourages the expulsion of the indigenous Serbian population.
This inevitably begs the question: was the “Kosovo project” worth the sacrifice and destruction that the alliance brought upon Yugoslavia? Has the self-proclaimed “republic” added stability or prosperity to the Balkan region?
There is no doubt that the United States’ concern for the rights of Kosovo Albanians is a fake claim from the get-go. It is nothing but a false pretext for the crackdown on Serbs.
The West’s goal was to turn the provisional self-governing bodies in Pristina into a tool for anti-Serb ethnic cleansing and a festering trouble spot to put pressure on Belgrade. At the end of the day, the Kosovo settlement is in a deadlock, and the situation on the ground threatens to escalate into an armed conflict.
This is what the Western “peacemaking” is all about. Its disastrous ramifications can now be seen in Ukraine, where a neo-Nazi regime has been nurtured on the basis of Washington and its supporters’ rejection of the principles of equality and mutual respect in international affairs, a regime that committed genocide against the Russian population and plunged the country into a military face-off.
We can hear the US and the EU increasingly call on Serbs to “turn the page” and forgive NATO for the invasion that took place 25 years ago. On top of that, they lay the bulk of the blame on the Serbs for the dramatic events during the breakup of Yugoslavia, including the 1999 bombing attacks. I’d be hard pressed to find proper words to describe the extent of Western shamelessness and lack of self-criticism.
The Alliance will never be able to wash off the shame of war crimes. No one believes its demagoguery about defending freedom and democracy anymore. The United States and the rest of NATO have no right whatsoever to talk about implementing an obscure new “rules-based order.” Their every effort to put together some kind of “global security architecture” is by definition malevolent and toxic, and aimed solely at perpetrating the neocolonial hegemony of the West.
Russia and its partners in Belgrade will continue to oppose the attempts to distort the history of the Yugoslav crisis and to shift the emphasis to demonising Serbs and justifying the 1999 aggression. The attempts to insult the memory of the innocent victims of NATO hangmen are unacceptable.
The Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation firmly protests against the collective West countries continuing to supply the Kiev regime with weapons, munitions and military equipment, which are being used to murder civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure in the Russian Federation.
The attacks on Belgorod on December 30, 2023, and on Donetsk on January 21, 2024, were particularly cynical and cruel. The Ukrainian armed forces used multiple launch rocket systems to target crowded public places, killing more than 50 people and wounding over 130 others.
On February 3, 2024, the Ukrainian armed forces attacked the residential neighbourhoods and civilian infrastructure of Lisichansk, killing 28 people, including one child.
The Ukrainian armed forces conduct these heinous actions with the use of weapons, munitions and military equipment sent to Ukraine, in part, by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America, the Federal Republic of Germany, the French Republic, the Czech Republic and several other member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union. The list of these weapons includes US-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Franco-British Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles and depleted uranium rounds, German AT2 and French HPD F2 mines, which pose a danger to civilians, Czech-made Vampire multiple rocket launchers, and many other types of weapons made in the West.
The Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation hereby declares that in continuing to deliver weapons, munitions and military equipment, the countries of the collective West are becoming direct accomplices in the crimes of the Kiev regime, responsible for the death of innocent civilians, including women and children, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and gross violations of international law.
The Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation urges the parliaments of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America, the Federal Republic of Germany, the French Republic, the Czech Republic and several other member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union to acknowledge the direct responsibility of their countries for the death of innocent civilians in the course of attacks conducted by the Ukrainian armed forces on civilian infrastructure in the Russian Federation and to take urgent measures to stop the supply of weapons, munitions and military equipment to the Kiev regime. (emphasis in original, on the Telegram channel)
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These are extremely serious and consequential developments. The combined West, ostensibly democratic with accountable elected governance, is being held legally responsible for the limitless criminality of the Kiev regime. Both the weaponry and the specialized manning of these complex weaponry being used to kill and to wage systematic terrorism against Russian civilians, are western. The first (or last?) warning shots across the bow…… If there is no acceptable response, as is likely, how long until the tone and language hardens, transforming into declarative, as during December 2021??
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