20 years ago, on March 24 1999, the US-NATO and its accomplices started an invasion and bombing of Yugoslavia. This was done under false pretence and constituted the war crimes and crimes against humanity on the part of the following countries: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United, Kingdom, United States.
The aggression was directed against the Serbian people, and the Serbs are as close a brotherly nation to the Russians as one can get. A sure way to declare a war on Russia, as WWI shows, is to attack Serbia. In effect, that is what US-NATO did. 1999 became a watershed in the post-USSR American-Russian relations. Whereas before the attack on Yugoslavia, the Russians viewed the USA as a potential equal partner, a friend, then after 1999 the rosy naïve glasses fell off and Russians saw the USA for what it is – a gluttonous monster, only capable of grabbing and destroying, and entity, with which Russia will not be able to find a common cooperative ground.
In 1999 US-NATO declared a war on Russia. Yes, Russia was weak and pillages by the local crime gangs and the American foreign rule under the puppet leader of Yeltsin. The Wild 90s were at their darkest time. But the invasion of Yugoslavia became that rude awakening for Russia, which it needed to come back from the brink of death. And in that the sacrifice that Yugoslavia, the Serbs paid, was not in vain – it allowed to awaken the only force capable of curtailing the greedy and murderous ambition of the US-NATO.
Back then there was no wide-spread Internet, and getting at alternative information was still fairly difficult. The Western MSM ruled supreme, spreading the disinformation and manipulating imagery. Still, the US-NATO aggression against the Serbs awoke quite a few people in the West too. I remember that in Norway, Loesje had anti-war campaign posters displayed in the public transportation on the spots, where one would typically see commercial ads. “Where are the NATO cheerleaders?” read one of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SFzc272NOg
Based on the materials from 2014 RT article 15 years on: Looking back at NATO’s ‘humanitarian’ bombing of Yugoslavia
Graham Phillips reportage from Serbia, from the foot of a memorial Stella to the civilian victims of the NATO bombardment of 1999:
The US-NATO war crimes resulted in over 2,000 civilians being killed, including 88 children, and thousands more were injured. Over 200,000 ethnic Serbs were forced to leave their homeland in Kosovo. The airstrikes destroyed more than 300 schools, libraries, and over 20 hospitals. NATO targeted bridges, hospitals, markets and trains full of civilians. At least 40,000 homes were either completely eliminated or damaged and about 90 historic and architectural monuments were ruined. That is not to mention the long-term harm caused to the region’s ecology and, therefore, people’s health, as well as the billion-dollar economic damage.
The way US-NATO were conducting the bombing raids, they were specifically targeting the civilian infrastructure and energy sources to incur the maximum death, destruction and suffering on the Serbian people.
“There is a bridge near the city of Nis, which was bombed at the time when a passenger train was passing through it,” Milincic recalls.The tragedy on April 12, 1999 killed 15 people and wounded 44 others, while many passengers were never accounted for.
“We felt the blast and saw flames under the locomotive. The train was blown so powerfully, half a meter from the ground. I don’t know how we stayed on the rails,” recalled witness Boban Kostic.
“Our colleague got off the train when I did,” he said. “He was really scared. But another rocket hit and blew him to pieces,” added another witness, Goran Mikic.
“Why? Why civilians? Why a train?” said Dragan Ciric. “It still torments me, if the first rocket was a mistake, what were the next three for?” he told RT.
It was not only Russia that became awoken to the US-NATO monster rearing its ugly head copper-brown tinged head. China was also sent a message for it’s disobeying the USA – a mesage that did not sit well with the Chinese.
The Chinese embassy in the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade was also hit and set on fire by NATO airstrikes on May 7, 1999. Three citizens of the country were killed. The alliance called the attack “a mistake.” China is a permanent member of the UN Security Council and, along with Russia, did not support a military solution for the Kosovo crisis.
In the course of those horrible 11 weeks US-NATO launched 2,300 missiles at 990 targets (one of those targets was a large gas refinery) and dropped 14,000 bombs, including depleted uranium bombs and cluster munitions (unexploded cluster bombs continued to pose a threat to people long after the campaign was over.) They used over 1,031 aircraft and 30 attack ships and submarines. The depleted uranium used by the war criminals has thoroughly poisoned the Serbian land, resulting in abnormally high cancer levels, as was documented in the Two Documentaries: “Murder of Yugoslavia” and “Democracy of Mass Destruction”. I translated the latter of the two documentaries in the following article: Democracy of Mass Destruction. Documentary by Pavel Selin (with English subtitles)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPSKNtw-GcE
Moscow’s former envoy to NATO (1997-2002), Viktor Zavarzin, believes the military alliance’s aggression was “a crime against humanity” and a “violation of international laws and norms.” The event that unfolded 15 years ago laid ground to a new era of the development of international relations – the era of “chaosization of international law and its arbitrary manipulation,” Zavarzin, an MP for the United Russia party said at the State Duma plenary session on Friday.
There is a post-WWII slogan in the Russian-speaking world, remembering the NAZI atrocities and the price USSR had to pay to vanquish the monster:
No One’s Forgotten, Nothing’s Forgotten
This slogan is fully-applicable to the NATO atrocities in Yugoslavia and the price the Slavic people had to pay to be awakened to the presence of yet another monster.
Victims of US-NATO