Bombing of Serbia by NATO troops. "absolute violation of international law": how the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO aircraft changed the world. Environmental pollution

The United States because of the situation around Syria, accusing Moscow of "war crimes", said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"Now, against the backdrop of what is happening around Syria, our Western partners, primarily the Americans and the British, are already hysterically reaching public insults, using words such as" barbarism " war crime", - said Lavrov in an interview for the film "I firmly decided everything. Yevgeny Primakov" on the TV channel "Russia 1".

In response, Lavrov recalled that NATO countries unleashed the first armed aggression in Europe since the end of World War II, attacking Yugoslavia in 1999.

“The aggression against Yugoslavia was, of course, precisely aggression. By the way, this was the first armed attack in Europe on a sovereign state after 1945,” said the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“Let me remind you that the aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was accompanied by attacks on a huge number of civilian objects, including, among other things, Serbian television, bridges along which civilian passenger trains ran, and much more,” Lavrov said.

NATO on the side of the militants

Since the mid-1990s, Albanian separatists in the province of Kosovo, which was part of Serbia, have carried out armed attacks on government officials, as well as the Serbian population of the region.

In 1998, the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) proclaimed the beginning of an open armed struggle for the separation of the province from Serbia. In response, the Yugoslav security forces launched an operation against the terrorists.

Throughout 1998, NATO countries increased pressure on Belgrade to force it to cease hostilities in Kosovo. On September 23, 1998, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1199, calling on the parties to a ceasefire.

The immediate reason for NATO intervention in the conflict was the incident in Racak, when 45 Albanians were killed during an attack on a village held by militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Representatives of Western countries claimed that the Albanians were executed, representatives of Yugoslavia - that they died in battle.

At the same time, Western countries ignored numerous cases of massacres perpetrated by KLA militants against Serbs.

The United States tried to obtain a NATO mandate to conduct a military operation against Yugoslavia, but this turned out to be impossible due to the categorical opposition to support such a resolution on the part of two permanent members of the UN Security Council: Russia and China.

"Allied Force": 78 days of destruction

Under these conditions, NATO put forward an ultimatum to the leadership of Yugoslavia demanding to withdraw troops from Kosovo, threatening to use force in case of refusal.

March 24, 1999, after the terms of the ultimatum were not met, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana ordered the commander of NATO forces in Europe, the American General Wesley Clark launch a military operation against Yugoslavia. The operation was codenamed "Allied Force". Already on the evening of March 24, NATO aircraft bombarded Belgrade, Pristina, Uzhice, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Pancevo, Podgorica and other cities.

Novi Sad during the bombing. Photo: Creative Commons

The start of NATO aggression against Yugoslavia was the cause of the first large-scale crisis in Russian-American relations since the collapse of the USSR. Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who was on his way to the United States, after receiving information about the start of the bombing, turned the plane over the Atlantic and urgently returned to Russia.

The bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO forces continued from March 24 to June 10, 1999. Both military and civilian targets were subjected to air strikes.

According to the Yugoslav authorities, civilian casualties amounted to 1,700 people killed and more than 10,000 wounded, more than 800 people were missing. About 400 children were among the victims of the bombings.

14 countries took part in the operation, which had 1,200 aircraft at their disposal. The naval group consisted of 3 aircraft carriers, 6 attack submarines, 2 cruisers, 7 destroyers, 13 frigates, 4 large landing ships. The total human composition of the NATO forces involved in the operation exceeded 60,000 people.

During the operation, over 78 days, NATO aircraft made 35,219 sorties, more than 23,000 bombs and missiles were dropped and fired.

During the bombing, 89 factories and plants, 128 other industrial and service facilities, 120 energy facilities, 14 airfields, 48 hospitals and hospitals, 118 radio and TV repeaters, 82 bridges, 61 road junctions and tunnels, 25 post and telegraph offices, 70 schools, 18 kindergartens, 9 buildings of university faculties and 4 dormitories, 35 churches, 29 monasteries.

Among the facilities that were destroyed by NATO bombing was the industrial complex in Panchevo: a nitrogen plant, an oil refinery and a petrochemical complex.

Poisonous chemicals and compounds entered the atmosphere, water and soil, posing a threat to human health and ecological systems throughout the Balkans.

Concerning Serbian Minister of Health Leposava Milicevic declared: “Our chemical plants were not even bombed Adolf Gitler! NATO is doing it calmly, destroying rivers, poisoning the air, killing people, the country. A brutal experiment is being carried out on our people using the latest weapons.”

During the attacks on Yugoslavia, depleted uranium ammunition was used, which provoked the contamination of the area and an outbreak of cancer in subsequent years.

"Tomahawk" on journalists

During the operation, NATO forces committed actions that can directly be considered as war crimes.

On April 12, 1999, a NATO aircraft attacked passenger train No. 393 with missiles, en route from Belgrade to Ristovač. As a result of the attack, 14 people died and 16 were injured. All the dead and injured were civilians.

The NATO representative, acknowledging the fact of the attack, expressed regret, explaining that the pilot simply "wanted to destroy the bridge." The International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, considering the incident, considered that the bridge "was a legal target" and that the passenger train was not intentionally hit.

On 23 April 1999, a Tomahawk cruise missile attack destroyed the Radio and Television of Serbia building in Belgrade. 16 employees of the television center who were at their workplace at the time of the bombing and broadcast in live nightly roundup of news, were killed, 16 more were injured. NATO declared the television center building a legal target on the grounds that the journalists were conducting a "propaganda campaign".

On May 7, 1999, the building of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was bombed. Xinhua journalist killed Shao Yunhuan, journalist of the newspaper "People's Daily" Xu Xinghu and his wife Zhu Ying.

NATO said the strike was in error. As compensation, the United States paid $28 million to China for the destruction of the legation building, as well as $4.5 million to the relatives of the dead and injured embassy staff.

"We are truly sorry"

On May 7, 1999, NATO aircraft attacked residential areas of the city of Nis with cluster bombs. As a result of the bombing, 15 people were killed and 18 more were injured. NATO Secretary General Javier Solana said: “Our target was the airfield. We sincerely regret the civilian casualties. The alliance had no intention of attempting their lives and will take all precautions to avoid such incidents."

On May 13, 1999, NATO planes bombed the village of Korisha, in which there were Albanian refugees. At least 48 people became victims of the attack, more than 60 were injured.

On May 16, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana accused the Serbs of killing Kosovo Albanians in the village of Korisha. In an interview with the BBC, he said that the Kosovo refugees were used in the village of Korishe, which "without a doubt" is the "command post" of the Serbian army, as "human shields". So while the refugees died and suffered from the alliance's bombs, the fault lies with the Serbs, according to a statement by the bloc's general secretary. Press Secretary Jimmy Shea also accused the Yugoslav troops of deliberately placing about 600 refugees next to military installations in Koris. Shea said the incident, and the fact that the Serbs could continue to use Kosovo Albanians as human shields, would not force NATO to stop bombing.

Western journalists who worked near the village of Korisha said that there were no Serb military installations there, and the bombing could be a gross mistake by NATO.

Verdict: Serbs are to blame

On June 10, 1999, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1244, which approved the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops and police forces from Kosovo. The region was transferred under international control.

Thus, the actual separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia took place, which was legally formalized in February 2008.

The International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia accused the leadership of Serbia and the Serbian secret services of crimes against humanity against the Albanian population of Kosovo.

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, accused by the ICTY of war crimes in Kosovo, died in prison during a tribunal in The Hague in 2006 as a result of a heart attack. Prior to this, several petitions from Milosevic for medical assistance in Russia due to heart disease were rejected by the tribunal. The trial in the case of Slobodan Milosevic was closed due to the death of the accused.

No NATO bloc official has been held accountable for the attacks on civilian targets and civilian deaths during Operation Allied Force.

The guest from Brussels made such a statement at a meeting with students of the Department of Scandinavian Languages of the Faculty of Philology of the University of Belgrade, RTS informed.

Stoltenberg acknowledged that many people in Serbia are still very painful about the events of 19 years ago and are negative towards NATO. Therefore, the official stressed, the purpose of his visit was to "send an important message" to Serbian youth. Stoltenberg spoke about the importance of the country's close cooperation with NATO, although Serbia has repeatedly declared its military neutrality.

The head of the North Atlantic Alliance also touched upon another topic unpleasant for the Serbs - Kosovo, where, as the Norwegian recalled, the organization is represented by KFOR detachments, whose task is to "preserve security and protect all communities." The head of NATO also noted the importance of the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina.

Stoltenberg took part in the lecture as the most famous in modern world politics - native speaker of Norwegian. A high-ranking figure tried to be extremely polite and friendly with young Serbs.

He remembered how in the early 1960s he lived in Belgrade for several years, where his father worked as the Norwegian ambassador, and ate his first ice cream in Kalemegdan, a park near the city fortress.

After the lesson, the students willingly shared their impressions. According to Irena Popovich, Stoltenberg tried to present NATO as an organization of an exclusively defensive orientation, which "does not attack or extend its power to foreign lands, but only protects peace and order."

The listeners admitted that they received a lot of new information that they had not suspected before, but basically remained unconvinced.

NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, which then included modern Serbia and Montenegro, began on March 24 and lasted until June 10, 1999. The overall command was carried out by the head of NATO forces in Europe, Wesley Clark. The operation received the full support of the President of the United States, the head and Prime Minister of Great Britain.

The official reason for the bombing was the bloody clashes between the Albanian paramilitary group "Kosovo Liberation Army", which fought for the independence of the region, in which ethnic Albanians lived more than Serbs, and the Yugoslav security forces. The West blamed the Yugoslav authorities for ethnic cleansing, turning a blind eye to similar - and often more massive and brutal - crimes committed by Kosovo-Albanian formations.

Dmitry Okunev/Gazeta.Ru

Events have shown the complete failure of the Yugoslav air defense systems. NATO planes broke into the airspace over Yugoslavia almost without damage, inflicting missile and bomb strikes on Belgrade, Novi Sad, Podgorica and others settlements. For almost three months of intervention, the attacking side lost only one attack aircraft - the American F-117A Nighthawk, which was shot down 40 km west of the Serbian capital on the third day of aggression, March 27, by the obsolete Soviet S-125 Neva air defense system.

It was not possible to catch the pilot - he fled from the police, and then was evacuated to Italy.

There is a version that the battery under the command of Colonel Zoltan Dani hit the object by mistake, accidentally opening fire and not having a specific target. The remains of the F-117 are on public display at the Belgrade Aviation Museum next to the airport. The country's defense power was negatively affected by the collapse of greater Yugoslavia, the sanctions imposed as a result of the Bosnian War, and the provisions of the Dayton agreements on arms reduction. Of the 20 air force bases of 1991, by 1999 Yugoslavia had only five. Almost all equipment was of little use for modern warfare.

At the same time, in 1996, Russia, as part of paying off the debt of the USSR to the SFRY, offered to supply the Yugoslavs with 20 MiG-29 fighters and the S-300 air defense system. President Milosevic refused such a deal.

Attacks by NATO aircraft were mainly directed at military and engineering facilities, as well as communications, but civilian infrastructure was also heavily damaged. During the bombing, from about 300 (according to Yugoslavia) to 1200 (NATO version) security officials and at least 500 civilians were killed. Many were left without housing and livelihoods. The Serbian authorities have decided not to rebuild some bomb-damaged buildings. So, in the center of Belgrade, a dilapidated former building rises, attracting foreign tourists.

The building of radio and television is in approximately the same condition, the workers of which NATO accused of a "propaganda campaign." According to the interpretation, the destruction of the television center fell into the category of war crimes. When attacked by Tomahawk missiles, 16 employees were killed while broadcasting a nightly news report at that moment. At the same time, in April, a raid was carried out on shopping center"Ushche".

A stele has been erected in Belgrade's Tashmajdan Park in memory of journalists and studio employees. The word “Why?” is embossed on it.

The victims of the bombing were Russian citizens. A group of engineers were burned alive during the bombing of Belgrade, and at least one other person was killed when a bridge near the Petrovaradin fortress in Novi Sad was destroyed. Posters with photographs and names of those killed among the civilian population are regularly exhibited near the building of the Assembly - the Serbian parliament, where they traditionally protest against the visit of foreign politicians, who are more or less involved in the tragic events.

Dmitry Okunev/Gazeta.Ru

The response to the Yugoslav events in Russia was spontaneous anti-American rallies. During one of them, the crowd almost destroyed the American embassy: the police barely managed to hold back the onslaught of the youth, and only the entrance of the building was damaged. Dmitry Okunev/Gazeta.Ru

With a peacekeeping mission in the midst of air strikes, they visited Belgrade, and. As Nemtsov later said, Russian deputies tried to persuade the Serbian Patriarch Pavel and Pope John Paul II to ask Clinton to stop the attack. The pontiff refused, citing the fact that the American president would not listen to him.

Participation Russian army in the conflict was limited to a raid of 200 peacekeepers located in Bosnia on Pristina, where on the night of June 12 the Slatina airport was taken under control. One of the commanders of the operation was the current president of Ingushetia, at that time a major, who was awarded the title of Hero of Russia.

(Operation Allied Force) - the air force operation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bloc against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) from March 24 to June 10, 1999. The American campaign under the operation was codenamed "Noble Anvil" (Noble Anvil). In some sources it appears under the name "Merciful Angel".

The reason for the international intervention was the inter-ethnic conflict between Albanians and Serbs who historically lived in Kosovo. On September 23, 1998, the UN Security Council approved Resolution No. 1199, which demanded that the authorities of the FRY and the leadership of the Kosovo Albanians ensure a ceasefire in Kosovo and begin negotiations without delay.

The situation escalated especially strongly after the incident in the village of Racak on January 15, 1999, when there was a major armed clash between representatives of the Yugoslav security forces and militants of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Negotiations held in February-March 1999 in Rambouillet and Paris (France). The parties failed to reach an agreement, FRY President Slobodan Milosevic refused to sign military annexes to the agreement on the settlement of the crisis.

On March 24, 1999, without the sanction of the UN Security Council, the NATO alliance on the territory of the FRY. The decision to launch the operation was made by Javier Solana, then NATO Secretary General.

The official reason for the start of hostilities was the presence of Serbian troops in the territory of the province of Kosovo and Metohija. Serbian authorities have also been accused of ethnic cleansing.

In the first month of Operation Allied Force, NATO aircraft made an average of about 350 sorties daily. At the NATO summit in Washington on April 23, 1999, the leaders of the alliance decided to intensify the air campaign.

In total, during the operation, NATO forces, according to various sources, made from 37.5 to 38.4 thousand sorties, during which more than 900 targets were attacked on the territory of Serbia and Montenegro, more than 21 thousand tons of explosives were dropped.

Prohibited types of munitions with radioactive impurities, mainly depleted uranium (U 238), were used in the airstrikes.

Shortly after the start of military aggression, the parliament of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia voted in favor of joining the union of Russia and Belarus. Russian President Boris Yeltsin blocked this process, since such a decision could give rise to a number of international difficulties.

The bombing ceased on June 9, 1999, after representatives of the FRY army and NATO in the Macedonian city of Kumanovo signed a military-technical agreement on the withdrawal of troops and police of Federal Yugoslavia from the territory of Kosovo and on the deployment of international armed forces on the territory of the region.

The number of military and civilians who died during the operation has not yet been precisely established. According to Serbian authorities, about 2.5 thousand people died during the bombing, including 89 children. 12.5 thousand people were injured.

The human rights organization Human Rights Watch has confirmed 90 incidents in which civilians were killed as a result of NATO bombing.

According to the organization, between 489 and 528 civilians were killed during Operation Allied Force.

More than 60% of the lives of the civilian population were claimed by 12 military incidents, among them an air strike on a convoy of Albanian refugees from Gjakovica (April 14), during which 70 to 75 people were killed, more than 100 were injured; a raid on the cities of Surdulitsa (April 27) and Nis (May 7), an attack on a bus on a bridge near Pristina (May 1), an attack on the Albanian village of Korisha (May 14), during which, according to various sources, from 48 to 87 people died civilians.

According to official NATO data, during the campaign, the alliance lost two servicemen (the crew of an American An 64 helicopter that crashed during a training flight in Albania).

About 863 thousand people, primarily Serbs living in Kosovo, voluntarily left the region, another 590 thousand became internally displaced persons.

The final amount of damage that was inflicted on the industrial, transport and civilian facilities of the FRY was not named. According to various estimates, it was measured in the amount of 30 to 100 billion dollars. About 200 industrial enterprises, oil storage facilities, energy facilities, infrastructure facilities, including 82 railway and road bridges, were destroyed or seriously damaged. At least 100 monuments of history and architecture, which were under the protection of the state and under the protection of UNESCO, were damaged.

On June 10, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution No. 1244, according to which an international civilian security presence was established in the territory of Kosovo and Metohija. The document also mandated the withdrawal from Kosovo of the military, police and paramilitary forces of the FRY, the free return of refugees and displaced persons and unimpeded access to the territory of organizations providing humanitarian assistance, as well as the expansion of the degree of self-government for Kosovo.

On June 12, 1999, the first units of the international forces led by NATO - KFOR (Kosovo Force, KFOR) entered the region. Initially, the number of KFOR was about 50 thousand people. At the beginning of 2002, the contingent of peacekeepers was reduced to 39,000, by the end of 2003 to 17,500 servicemen.

As of the beginning of December 2013, the strength of the unit was about 4.9 thousand soldiers from more than 30 countries.

An independent commission to investigate the war crimes of NATO leaders against Yugoslavia, set up on August 6, 1999 at the initiative of Swedish Prime Minister Hans Göran Persson, concluded that NATO's military intervention was illegal, since the alliance had not received prior approval from the UN Security Council. However, the actions of the allies were justified by the fact that all diplomatic means of resolving the conflict had been exhausted.

The Commission criticized the use of cluster bombs by NATO aircraft, as well as the bombing of chemical industrial complexes and oil refineries on the territory of the FRY, which caused significant environmental damage.

In March 2002, the UN confirmed the radioactive contamination in Kosovo as a result of NATO bombing.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Svyatoslav Knyazev, Alena Medvedeva, Alexander Bovdunov

20 years ago, the NATO military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began. The formal reason for the air strikes was accusations against official Belgrade of carrying out ethnic cleansing against the Albanian population of Kosovo. The UN Security Council did not give permission for the bombing of Yugoslavia. Experts call the actions of the alliance a gross violation international law. As a result of NATO attacks in Yugoslavia, about 2,000 civilians were killed. According to analysts, aggression against European country allowed the United States to continue to use NATO forces for military intervention in the affairs of other sovereign states.

On March 24, 1999, NATO forces launched a military operation against Yugoslavia, codenamed Allied Force. The air force of the alliance over the course of several months launched a series of missile and bomb strikes on the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The operation was carried out in violation of international law, without the approval of the UN Security Council. It was opposed by Russia, China and a number of other members of the Security Council.

“The operation itself, when Serbia was bombed, was carried out with gross violations of all the principles of international humanitarian law, because purely civilian targets were bombed,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with NTV.

In the very first days of the operation, NATO forces tried to seize air supremacy by striking Yugoslav air defense and aviation assets. However, mostly purely civilian objects were bombed: residential areas of Belgrade, schools, kindergartens, oil refineries. Despite the technical superiority of the enemy, the Yugoslav air defense forces managed to shoot down an American F-117 stealth aircraft on March 27.

In April-May, those whom the alliance allegedly protected were also under attack by NATO: columns of Albanian refugees, as well as civilian infrastructure in Kosovo. These attacks claimed the lives of hundreds of people. According to local media, after dropping bombs on civilians, NATO planes then repeated their strikes when medics arrived at the scene.

Attacks on the civilian population and civilian objects in Yugoslavia in the course of the operation became more and more large-scale. In order to stop the death of his compatriots, Slobodan Milosevic agreed on June 3 to the implementation of the Western peace plan. However, the bombing continued for another week. On June 20, Yugoslav troops left Kosovo.

“The Alliance did not have any legitimate grounds for such actions, primarily the mandate of the UN Security Council. This act of aggression grossly violated the fundamental principles of international law enshrined in the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, as well as the international obligations of the member states of the bloc. The actions of the alliance even contradicted the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949, in which NATO countries pledged not to jeopardize international world, security and justice, as well as to refrain from the use of force or the threat of its use in international relations, if this is contrary to the purposes of the UN. It was then that the beginning was laid of replacing international law with “order” based on some arbitrary rules, or rather, on the law of the strong,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Slobodan Milosevic in 1999
Reuters

“NATO's actions against Yugoslavia were an absolute violation of international law. According to international legal acts, such use of force is possible only by decision of the UN Security Council, which in this case there wasn’t,” military expert Ivan Konovalov said in an interview with RT.

As a result of the NATO operation, the people of Yugoslavia suffered heavy losses. According to the official data of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, about 1,700 civilians and almost 600 security officials were killed under the missile and bomb attacks of the alliance. Among the victims of NATO raids were about 400 children. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, about 2,000 civilians, including 89 children, became victims of the aggression.

More than 10,000 people were admitted to hospitals in Yugoslavia during the bombing with severe injuries. Hundreds of thousands of residents of Serbia and Montenegro were left without a livelihood, a roof over their heads and even without access to clean water.

The use of munitions containing depleted uranium by the North Atlantic Alliance has led to a sharp increase in the level of cancer. Even those who were not directly affected by NATO strikes felt their consequences - the damage to the Yugoslav economy amounted to about $ 30 billion, 14 largest enterprises in the country were destroyed, about 50 bridges were damaged.

Despite NATO's technical advantage, the aggression did not go unanswered. According to the data announced by the chief of the general staff of the Yugoslav army, Dragoljub Oydanich, 61 aircraft and seven NATO helicopters were shot down during the fighting. True, the alliance recognizes the loss of only two aircraft and several dozen drones.

Road to War

The first speeches of the Kosovo Albanians took place as early as 1981. Against their background, interethnic relations in Yugoslavia as a whole worsened. In 1991-1992 the country collapsed. Only Serbia and Montenegro remained in the renewed Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

In the mid-1990s, there was an escalation of violence against the Serbian population in Kosovo. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was created (according to some media reports, with the support of the US and UK intelligence agencies. — RT), which in 1998 headed for the separation of the region from Yugoslavia. Full-scale military clashes began. After the NATO council supporting the KLA announced the preparation of a military operation against Yugoslavia, on October 15, 1998, official Belgrade concluded a truce in Kosovo. However, attacks on the peaceful Serb population continued, and in early 1999, the Yugoslav security forces were forced to resume fighting.

On January 14-18 clashes took place near the village of Rachak. Representatives of the Kosovo Liberation Army accused the Yugoslav security forces of "executing" the peaceful Albanian population. According to the conclusions of Serbian, Belarusian and Finnish experts, those who died in Racak were militants dressed in civilian clothes with traces of gunpowder on their hands. However, the EU Commission considered that there was no evidence of the participation of those who died in the battles. The incident in Racak became the formal basis for NATO intervention in the conflict.

Rally against NATO in Belgrade
Reuters
Petar Kujundzic

“It was not a reason, but an artificially created pretext. That it was a provocation has long been known. This has been repeatedly said, written and provided evidence. The allegedly killed civilians were in fact soldiers, fighters from the Albanian Liberation Army, the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, who were simply dressed in civilian uniforms. It has long been known that it was such a "setup". Unfortunately, this provocation was organized by the then head of the OSCE mission, American Walker, who, having arrived at the scene and found the corpses, which were, as I said, neatly dressed in civilian clothes, right there, on the spot, declared that an act of genocide had taken place. - said Sergey Lavrov.

The alliance demanded that Belgrade allow NATO troops into Kosovo, but the leadership of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia refused. The United States, with the approval of other Western countries, tried to enlist the support of the UN Security Council. Russia, China, Argentina and Brazil opposed the use of force.

“The Americans were unstoppable. They made a decision a long time ago and tried to “consecrate” it through the UN Security Council, and realizing that nothing worked out, they went on a unilateral aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the UN Charter, the principles of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and, in principle, the entire world order that was created as a result of the Second World War,” Sergey Lavrov emphasized.

According to political scientist Ekaterina Pomortseva, the process of separating Kosovo from Serbia looks well planned and inspired from outside.

“It took a long time, smoothly, with the involvement of a significant amount of resources. I think that even with the unilateral declaration of Kosovo's independence in 2008, this process has not ended. The Kosovo problem will be relevant in the future, ”Pomortseva said in an interview with RT.

Reuters

U-turn over the Atlantic

According to Sergei Lavrov, the US actions in Yugoslavia were due to the fact that Washington considered itself the winner in the Cold War, and Russia was weakened after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Washington was tempted to take the situation around the world under its full control, move away from the principles of coordinating approaches to international problems based on the UN Charter and resolve all emerging issues in such a way as to dominate in all regions of the world,” Lavrov stressed.

The bombing of Yugoslavia led to a sharp cooling of relations between Russia and Western countries, in particular with the United States. A landmark event was the “reversal over the Atlantic,” experts say. On March 24, 1999, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Yevgeny Primakov, who was on his way to visit the United States, turned the plane over Atlantic Ocean and returned to Russia.

“If the West understood how the bombing of Yugoslavia would affect Russia, then I think it would not go for this adventure. The turn of Primakov's plane over the Atlantic closed the "dashing nineties" for Russia and marked the beginning of new era", - said political scientist Armen Gasparyan in a conversation with RT.

According to military expert Ivan Konovalov, one of the main reasons for the conflict was the desire of the US authorities to test NATO in action in order to understand whether it is possible after completion cold war use the bloc in their own interests without regard to international law and the UN.

“US partners in NATO were drawn into aggression against a European country. Moreover, both old and new - they were actually tied with blood. In addition, the United States has solved the problem of taking under its military air control of South-Eastern Europe, in the center of which is Kosovo. You can’t ignore the fact that at the same time Bill Clinton got into an unpleasant story with, and it was urgent to divert public attention to the side, ”Konovalov explained.

Bill Clinton announces decision to start bombing Yugoslavia
Reuters

According to Stevan Gajic, an expert at the Institute for European Studies, the bombing of Yugoslavia pursued geopolitical and ideological goals.

“A new world order was being created. After the collapse of the bipolar world, there should have been one independent state— USA. Yugoslavia interfered with the West by its very existence, and it was sacrificed, ”the expert said.

According to analysts, the fact that the United States, without the sanction of the UN Security Council, was able to conduct a military operation against a sovereign state became a prologue to Washington's subsequent illegal military intervention in the affairs of independent states.

“The bombing of Yugoslavia opened a Pandora's box. It is thanks to US impunity that Iraq, Libya and Syria became possible in the Balkans. And so far this process has not stopped,” Ivan Konovalov noted.

According to Sergei Lavrov, what happened in 1999 "reverberates" around the world to this day.

“They try to use that experience when they name individual means mass media not the media, but "propaganda tools". By the way, this is how Russia Today and Sputnik are called in France, they are forbidden to appear at events where other media are accredited. It was then that a line began to accuse journalists from a number of media outlets of being a “mouthpiece of propaganda” - this is how they explained the need for strikes on the television center in Belgrade, ”said the Russian Foreign Minister.

"The Balkans still hear the echo of the bombing"

Despite the fact that 20 years have passed since the NATO military operation, this topic remains an unhealed wound for the people of Serbia, experts say.

According to Ekaterina Pomortseva, the 1999 bombings caused the Serbs to become disillusioned with international law.

“For the people of Serbia, talking about international law is not a funny joke. They do not believe in international justice proclaimed in the West and in international courts, which, following the results of the Yugoslav conflict, condemned mainly Serbs, ”the expert emphasized.

Reuters

According to Stevan Gajic, memories of the NATO bombings are extremely painful for the Serbian people and largely determine their current attitude towards the Western world.

“Despite the fact that NATO invests huge amounts of money in promoting its ideology, the alliance has a negative image in Serbia. The Balkans still hear and will hear the echo of the bombing, ”he said.

The Serbian leadership has not forgotten about the tragedy of 1999 either.

“We can forgive, but we cannot forget NATO aggression, we want good relations with NATO, but we don’t want to join NATO,” Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said shortly before the 20th anniversary of the start of the bombing.