Yugoslavia: NATO will never wash away the shame of war crimes

Maria Zakharova / Мария Захарова (Telegram)
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation

On March 24, the international community - that part of it that knows history and has not lost the notion of justice and humanism - recalls the 26th anniversary of the beginning of the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia.

By attacking a sovereign country, the United States and its satellites abused international law undermined the foundations of security in Europe, and provoked a crisis in inter-State relations that has not been resolved to this day.

Much has been said about the terrible events of 1999, the chronology of the invasion by the Western coalition has been analyzed minute by minute, and the consequences have been thoroughly documented. But this does not mean that, as time passes, the massacre of Yugoslavia fades into memory or loses its formidable symbolism. No matter how much the NATO allies call on the Serbian people to forget the past, to "turn the page", the memory of that bloody spring lives on.

NATO's so-called "humanitarian intervention" is an example of modern barbarism (and of the "rules-based" world order), of the unfounded belief in one's superiority. Even before the strikes on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Western propaganda was turned on full blast to make Serbs feel guilty, to make them perceive the bombing as a "deserved lesson". The alliance presented the case as bringing the values of freedom and democracy to the Balkans along with depleted uranium munitions.

Thousands of dead Yugoslav civilians, including 89 children, are cynically referred to in the West as "collateral damage".

It is appropriate to refer to the results of last year's survey on attitudes toward NATO aggression in today's Serbia, cited in the monograph "The Long Echo of 1999". Over 75% of respondents believe that Washington and Brussels have not redeemed their guilt to the Serbs.

They have no intention of redeeming it. They are just waiting for the moment to do what they could not do then - to break Serbia. We believe that this will not happen, and we are doing everything we can to make sure that it does not happen.

In Serbia, the public is unanimous in explaining the motivation of the North Atlantic Alliance: to gain a foothold in the Balkans using a military campaign, to take away Kosovo and turn it into an American colony. To accomplish this, the West has enlisted, armed, and equipped Kosovo Liberation Army terrorists, endowed the province with pseudo-state status, and behind the scenes encouraged ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Serbian population.

NATO will never wash away the shame of war crimes, including the destruction of residential areas in Serbia, hospitals, schools, bridges, passenger transport, and refugee columns. We will always stand in solidarity with the Serbs in preserving the memory of the victims of the 1999 tragedy and in preventing attempts to rewrite the history of the Yugoslav crisis in a Westernized manner.

We will always be on guard of historical memory.

Translation: DeepL (free version) + Grammarly (free version)

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