RIA Novosti, March 24, 2024 The bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO forces in March 1999 has dramatically changed the attitude of the Russian leaders towards NATO and launched a chain of destruction of security in Europe, which led to the current events in the Ukraine, experts told RIA Novosti.
Exactly 25 years ago, an armed confrontation between Albanian separatists from the Kosovo Liberation Army and the security forces of Serbia led to the bombing of the FRY (at that time consisting of Serbia and Montenegro) by NATO forces. The military operation was undertaken without the approval of the UN Security Council, based on the assertion of Western countries that the authorities of the FRY were allegedly carrying out ethnic cleansing in the Kosovo autonomy and provoked a humanitarian catastrophe there.
“The bombing of Yugoslavia, which coincided with the first stage of NATO expansion, was a turning point in the perception of the Russian public and political elites. In the West, almost no one realizes this. Why is Russia against NATO expansion? And why is there, all of a sudden, such an armed conflict in the Ukraine because of that? But these are all events in one single chain of European politics, the chain of destruction of European security, which started exactly then. Now it has reached its logical conclusion,” the head of the Center for International Security of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Alexey Arbatov told RIA Novosti.
The President of the Russian Association for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, Tatyana Parkhalina, also agrees that the events in Yugoslavia laid the foundation for the current confrontation between Russia and the West.
“That sphere of alienation that began then, two and a half decades ago, it largely led to what we have now, to the confrontation that we see between Russia and the West during not only the conflict in the Ukraine, but also during other regional conflicts,” the expert noted.
Speaking about the historical importance of events in Yugoslavia, she added that the bombings created a precedent “where not all members of the Security Council agreed,” recalling that Russia did not support the coalition’s actions.
Another precedent, according to Alexey Arbatov, was the use by NATO forces of shells with depleted uranium. He noted that although such projectiles are not used for the purpose of radioactive contamination, studies “that have been carried out for a long time have shown that even such depleted uranium still affects people’s health in terms of radioactive consequences.”
Currently, as Tatyana Parkhalina notes, most Serbs have “gradually overcome the consequences,” and as Belgrade moves forward along the path of European integration, “these events will be washed away more.” At the same time, according to experts, it is not possible to completely erase the memories of the aggression of the Western coalition against Yugoslavia.
“We now see that this is manifested in the fact that Serbia has a completely different attitude towards the events in the Ukraine than most European countries,” Arbatov concluded.
NATO airstrikes continued from March 24 to June 10, 1999.
NATO bombing led to the death of over 2.5 thousand people, including 87 children, and damage of 100 billion dollars; doctors are recording the consequences of the use of depleted uranium, leading to an increase in cancer.